SHIELD-6G with AI-native cyber threat intelligence platform to enhance cybersecurity for Europe’s future 6G networks
The SHIELD-6G (Scalable, Hybrid, and Intelligent End-to-End Defense for 6G Networks) project is exploring ways of strengthening cybersecurity for Europe’s future 6G networks. Backed by an €8 million ($9 million) grant from the European Commission, the 36-month initiative brings together 19 international partners to build an AI-native cyber threat intelligence platform for future networks. Telefónica, Ericsson and Nokia are among 19 companies and research organizations from 10 European countries (Ireland, Spain, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Latvia, Estonia, and Turkey) are involved. The project is being coordinated by University College Dublin.
“Future 6G networks are expected to support highly sensitive and mission-critical applications, including connected healthcare, autonomous industrial operations, smart manufacturing, maritime connectivity, and resilient public and private communications,” states the press release.
“6G networks will form the foundation of Europe’s next generation of digital services, but their success will depend on trust, resilience, and security by design,” said Madhusanka Liyanage, Associate Professor/Ad Astra Fellow and Director of Graduate Research at the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland. “SHIELD‑6G brings together a strong European consortium to develop intelligent cybersecurity capabilities that can protect critical services and support Europe’s digital sovereignty.”
“6G is way more complex than 5G, because it manages more devices, and there’s more automation, and with automation there come problems,” says Bart Siniarski, director at MBP Network Technology, a Shield-6G member organization. “The attack surface will be extended by a couple of magnitudes. So when we step into 6G — which is, to me, 5G on AI steroids — there are going to be problems at the beginning. And then over time [the goal is that] we are comfortable using 6G in critical infrastructure like hospitals or factories or maybe in shipping and militaries.”
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Core AI Security Technologies:
Privacy-Preserving Analytics: Uses federated learning and differential privacy to train threat detection models locally on edge devices. Networks share intelligence without exposing sensitive underlying user data.
Explainable AI (XAI): Ensures complex model decisions are transparent by providing clear, human-readable explanations for network blocks or flags. This prevents false alarms from interrupting critical infrastructure like hospitals or shipping lanes.
Zero-Touch Security Orchestration: Combines automation with secure multi-party computation to isolate and mitigate zero-day network breaches. Responses trigger dynamically with minimal human intervention.
Digital Twin Simulation: Embeds AI models into a network digital twin environment to safely stress-test defenses. The software predicts how an attack will propagate before it affects live network traffic.
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- AI-Native Threat Detection: Developing an automated, real-time cyber defense platform for identifying and mitigating known and unknown threats, including zero-day attacks.
- Privacy & Resilience: Using secure multi-party computation and federated learning to ensure user data remains private while improving systemic network resilience.
- Real-World Validation: Testing the 6G security framework across critical use cases such as connected healthcare, smart manufacturing, and maritime connectivity.
- Coordinating Institution: University College Dublin (UCD).
- Key Partners: Includes multinational companies, specialist SMEs (such as UCD spinout MBP Systems), and the global defense and aerospace giant Thales.
- Funding: Backed by the EU under the Horizon Europe program through the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU).
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- Remote Medical Operations: Securing ultra-low latency connections required for real-time remote robotic surgeries and critical patient monitoring.
- Data Privacy Compliance: Ensuring that highly sensitive personal health telemetry data remains private during processing.
- Interconnected Medical Devices: Safeguarding thousands of continuous-monitoring hospital IoT devices from unauthorized network penetration.
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- Autonomous Industrial Operations: Protecting automated, closed-loop machinery and collaborative factory floor robots from data injection or remote hijacking.
- Digital Twin Environments: Modeling and simulating cyberattacks safely inside factory digital twins without disrupting ongoing physical production.
- Supply Chain Automation: Securing end-to-end logistics automation against zero-day vulnerabilities in multi-stakeholder industrial software.
- Autonomous Shipping & Logistics: Defending open-sea navigation, automated port loading systems, and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication channels.
- Critical Coastal Infrastructure: Ensuring stable, tamper-proof communications for offshore installations like deep-sea cargo networks and renewable energy hubs.
- Satellite-Terrestrial Handover: Securing the handoff of tracking data as vessels transition between ground stations and global satellite communication networks.
The SHIELD-6G platform utilizes AI-native, privacy-preserving, and automated technologies to establish a Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) pipeline tailored for 6G networks. These technologies allow multi-stakeholder networks to self-heal against cascading vulnerabilities without sharing raw data.
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References:
https://www.telecoms.com/5g-6g/european-consortium-launches-shield-6g-security-project
https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-operations/eu-6g-network-security
linkedin.com/posts/bartsiniarski_shield6g-6g-cybersecurity-activity-7467489224217460736-A0yi
