National Research Programme “Digital Resilience of Critical Infrastructures” (NRP 86)
The NRP 86 aims to strengthen the resilience of Switzerland’s critical infrastructures against cyberattacks in the longer term by investing in developing a state-of-the-art agile collective defence.
The National Research Programme “Digital Resilience of Critical Infrastructures” (NRP 86) aims to strengthen the resilience of Switzerland’s critical infrastructures against cyberattacks and other digital disruptions.
Society is becoming increasingly digitised. This brings many advantages but also creates new risks: while the digitisation of critical infrastructures has accelerated, the security of the underlying systems has not kept pace. Critical infrastructures underpin many areas of daily life: energy supply, healthcare, public and commercial transport, logistics, buildings, communication, agriculture, water supply and sanitation. Switzerland alone has millions of devices connected to the internet – more than the number of residents. At the same time, cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructures are increasing, including in Switzerland. Internationally, hospitals have been paralysed, ransomware has disrupted public transport, and data breaches have occurred in government administrations. Such incidents highlight the fragility of digitally connected systems and the importance of strengthening Switzerland’s digital resilience.
NRP 86 will support research that builds a stronger knowledge base on vulnerabilities and risks, while also developing technically viable and socially acceptable solutions. It will examine how governance and coordination mechanisms can support agile collective cyber defence and help critical infrastructures withstand, adapt to and recover from digital disruptions such as cyberattacks or system failures.
The programme is structured around four research areas:
‘Data’ focuses on what qualifies as relevant cybersecurity data and how access to, curation of, protection of and sharing of such data can be improved between academia, public authorities and critical infrastructure operators.
‘Best practices’ addresses organisational, technical and operational practices that are state of the art. It assesses how they can be adopted, tested, adapted and transferred across Swiss critical infrastructure sectors.
‘Incentives’ examines the economic, regulatory, behavioural and institutional conditions that shape cybersecurity investment and system-level resilience.
‘Collective defence’ explores how operators, suppliers, authorities, regulators, researchers and users can coordinate responsibilities, information exchange, risk assessment and joint responses before, during and after cyber incidents.
NRP 86 will fund interdisciplinary research with elements of transdisciplinary research. Projects are expected to be relevant to practice and to involve actors connected to the resilience, continuity or security of critical infrastructure services.