ALBA

The ALBA project (Enhancing cybersecurity and its sustainability for the benefit of society and individuals) aims to contribute to the ecological transition through the environmental objective of mitigating climate change by introducing the sustainability and energy consumption dimension into the energy consumption dimension of the project.
individuals) aims to contribute to the ecological transition through the environmental objective of climate change mitigation, introducing the dimension of sustainability and energy consumption in cybersecurity mechanisms, technologies and processes, which is identified as one of the key technological developments of the digital transition.
key technological developments of the digital transition. In addition, it is proposed to improve cybersecurity and its sustainability at the personal and family level, putting people themselves at the center of the proposal, paying special attention to the inclusion of more vulnerable profiles (elderly, children, people with disabilities, dependents, etc.), which present specific cybersecurity challenges.

Although the results of this project apply to cybersecurity in a broad technological context, they will have a special emphasis on the Internet of Things (IoT), as it is the closest thing to people in a context of digital transition, being direct protagonists of multiple and varied applications in the daily lives of citizens (Smart Homes, Smart Cities, Smart Hotels, Industry 4. 0, etc.), and we will do so through various disruptive technologies in which we already have experience from different perspectives, such as Ontologies and Metadata, Artificial Intelligence techniques, Blockchain and Quantum Computing. Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are very likely to be the most energy consuming and least sustainable technologies and will benefit from the ability of Quantum Computing to explore exponential search spaces in polynomial or even constant time.

In short, for the problem of an increasingly widespread and intensive use of ICT services and the protection of their cybersecurity, it is proposed to contribute with a strategy to establish a scale of sustainability levels (based on a conceptualization of energy consumption elements) of cybersecurity solutions, and thus, to categorize the level of sustainability of these solutions and select possible more sustainable alternatives, even automatically, thanks to the use of ontologies and metadata for the conceptualization. We also intend to explore the use of artificial intelligence and quantum computing techniques for the optimization of cybersecurity processes and solutions that improve their sustainability, and in particular we will try to optimize the sustainability levels of cybersecurity configurations according to the previous scale. On the other hand, for the specific problem of improving cybersecurity in the context of individuals, it is proposed to contribute with the development of a framework and a risk analysis and management tool focused on individuals and family units, which considers the usual components (assets, threats, controls, etc.), but in domestic and inclusive personal contexts, contemplating in a prominent way the diverse technological and cybersecurity needs that may present more vulnerable profiles.