SALUS

Investigating cyberattacks against critical infrastructure and law enforcement is more complex than ever due to increased connectivity. New tools and rules that comply with legal and ethical standards are needed. With this in mind, the EU-funded SALUS project addresses this issue by creating innovative forensic solutions for real-time IoT threat detection, evidence collection, and cooperation among agencies. Using a digital twin infrastructure, secure network architecture, and AI-driven forensics, SALUS supports proactive simulations and proper evidence handling, protected by blockchain. The project has been tested in hospitals, nuclear facilities, and law enforcement pilots. It ensures that the technologies comply with EU privacy laws and cybersecurity policies. Through training, standards development, and ecosystem building, SALUS helps police address new IoT crimes more effectively across Europe.

SALUS addresses the growing security challenges of IoT systems by providing law enforcement with (i) new forensic investigation schemes and policies, and (ii) advanced IoT forensic tools for threat detection, evidence collection, and cross-agency collaboration, all while ensuring compliance with EU legal and ethical frameworks. To implement this, the project combines a novel Digital-Twin (DT) infrastructure for proactive threat simulation, a secure Software Defined Network-enabled IoT architecture (SDaaSS) acting as the backbone of the DT for dynamic policy enforcement, and AI-powered forensic capabilities for real-time IoT device detection, lawful evidence interception, and blockchain-based chain of custody. Validated through five diverse pilot use cases in collaboration with five (5) police authorities and two (2) critical infrastructure providers (hospitals and nuclear power plants), SALUS bridges technology and operational needs to enhance security in critical infrastructures and IoT ecosystems. The above technological developments will be closely accompanied by activities concerning: i) incorporation of legal and ethical aspects, including fundamental rights, privacy, personal data, etc, ii) integration of operational aspects, alignment with relevant EU cybersecurity policies, analysis of modus operandi, lawful evidence exploitation, and delivery of policy recommendations for tackling new and emerging forms of IoT-related crime, all aimed at improving police authorities’ understanding, iii) development of multi-dimensional, comprehensive practitioner training activities and joint exercises, tailored to the organization of operational-level hackathon activities, iv) Development of investigation, technological and security standards, and v) Establishment of a synergistic ecosystem among related national and EU-funded projects, as well as stakeholders from the law enforcement community.