The focus of VIGILANCE is on reducing the effort and cost required by cybersecurity providers and Critical Infrastructure operators to establish, deploy and operate intelligent cyber-defence strategies based on Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA). The project develops an autonomous and scalable cybersecurity ecosystem capable of operating across multiple administrative domains and interconnected digital supply chains. VIGILANCE combines technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, adversarial AI, blockchain and quantum-secure technologies within an integrated multi-layer cybersecurity platform. The platform supports continuous verification, adaptive risk and vulnerability assessment, real-time anomaly detection, Cyber Threat Intelligence, adversarial simulation and automated cybersecurity decision support. Through an Agentic ZTA Mesh, cybersecurity capabilities are mapped to intelligent agents that can assist with threat detection, policy enforcement, security recommendations and proactive defence. The developed solutions are validated in complex multi-party and cyber-physical environments, with the overall aim of moving cybersecurity from predominantly reactive protection towards proactive, adaptive and collaborative cyber defence.

DAC research group leads the activities concerning the specification of the VIGILANCE Agentic Zero Trust Architecture framework and technologies. The group coordinates WP2 and leads the definition of the reference framework and architecture for the Agentic ZTA Mesh, specifying the principles, policies and technical requirements required for a scalable, interoperable and resilient decentralised Zero Trust environment. This includes the mapping of cybersecurity capabilities to AI agents and their integration within the project’s agentic infrastructure. DAC also contributes to the analysis of cybersecurity requirements and reference scenarios, the inventory and specification of cybersecurity technologies, context-aware security-by-design recommendations, anomaly detection and the development of the project’s repository and wrappers for cybersecurity agents. In addition, the group contributes to pilot implementation and validation, cybersecurity training activities and the exploitation of the project’s research results. UPRC is a beneficiary of the VIGILANCE project.