GCP dashboard - June - December 2022

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Incident response needs a community that has several well developed criteria for even one organisation to successfully operate.  These features are:

1.  A mechanism to safely share data with trusted contacts in all sectors.  TF-CSIRT supplies this through its “trusted introducer” approach so that information shared on mailing lists and at meetings is with verified teams from all industries and sectors.  
2. A way to safely verify information about teams you wish to contact.  The detailed TI database has a public and a private view supporting communication at a variety of levels depending on the criticality of the data. 
3. Guarantees that contact information is up to date and usable.  TF-CSIRT runs three “reaction” tests a year to ensure that team contact data is correct, that teams have up to date TI certificates in place and that teams are shown to be responsive. 
4. The ability to train and mentor staff.  TF-CSIRT runs the successful TRANSITS training courses three times a year and makes the materials available to anyone with an interest under a Creative Commons license.  New teams and first time attendees are assigned a mentor at TF-CSIRT meetings. 

More specifically in 2022, TF-CSIRT has had the following impact:

 September:

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Developing security expertise and excellence within the NREN community
SIG-ISM offers CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers) of national research and education network (NREN) organisations the opportunity to share best practices and learn from each others’ experience, to safeguard their NREN against security incidents and threats.

The CISO role has become increasingly important as organisations become almost totally reliant on IT information systems. As the role of NRENs expands and the range of services operating across the networks grows, information security is vital ​and users will expect NRENs to safeguard their network connection, online assets and resources against security threats and risks.

Taking part in SIG-ISM can help equip NRENs with the skills to manage information security within their research and education community.

The main aims of the SIG-ISM:

• Establish a community of security management professionals
• Develop, maintain and promote a trust framework between NRENs based on international standards
• Promote the use of international security standards and share best practices for security management within NRENs
• Discuss and promote issues of information security management of particular interest to NRENs

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TF-RED All hands VC Mar 2020

Research Engagement provides the means for innovation and business development within the NREN community.  There is a broad range of capabilities within the community, from those NRENs just starting out in the formalised engagement activities, to those very experienced dedicated teams from well established NRENs.  Each NREN is on a different stage of the maturity journey but one common theme is that we can all learn from one another for ways to expand and enhance the interaction with the users of our services.  TF-RED focuses on these features which help to foster innovation with our users:

1. To provide an open forum.  TF-RED formalises existing collaborations of NRENs and other research infrastructures to provide a trusted setting to work together to develop methods for engaging with researchers and collaborations nationally and internationally.  
2. To scope out innovation.  TF-RED seeks to map out where Research is going globally and to provide ideas and a network of peers to work with across international boarders, with the intention to increase the understanding of research communities across continents. 
3. To develop a community.  TF-RED provides a foundation for a nascent group within the wider GÉANT and NREN community.  Meetings are held predominatly online due to the distributed nature of the community members with the ambition to build on and evangelise the role of talking to users in support of growing an NRENs userbase.
4. To share knowlegde and best practices.  TF-RED is the place to share information and methods for engaging with users and understanding their needs.  Each country is different but continually evolving.  What may work for one NREN could have applications for another on the otherside of the world.

More specifically in 2022, TF-RED has had the following impact:

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The Special Interest Group on Management of Service Portfolios promotes collaboration between research and education networking organisations in Europe and other regions on the topics of strategic, business and cooperative management of services.

The group provides a forum in which:​

• ​Issues that arise at the boundary between management and technical aspects of service management can be explored.
• Inputs, discussions, ideas and feedback are provided that ultimately help participants in their business-as-usual with their own target groups, users, other target communities and individual stakeholders.
• Feedback is provided on initiatives that can serve as inspiration or recommendations for follow up within the GÉANT Project or other initiatives.

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The Special Interest Group on Network Operations Centres (SIG-NOC) brings together NOC managers, developers, operators, controllers and project managers as well as network engineers involved in the integration and optimisation of NOC-specific tools, workflows and processes.

SIG-NOC facilitates knowledge exchange and collaboration, with participants discussing common issues, sharing experience, and developing common best practices.

Today’s NOC functions are essential, costly, and critical in respect of national research and education networking (NREN) organisations’ main business, as well as of regional, metropolitan and campus network providers and infrastructure development projects. There is extreme diversity in NOC organisation, structure, and roles with a lack of common practices related to day-to-day NOC operations.  The SIG-NOC aims to help the community to face such challenges.

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The Special Interest Group on Next Generation Networks (SIG-NGN) facilitates an open forum where experts from the R&E community, vendors and experts come together to exchange information, knowledge, ideas and best practices about specific technical or other areas of business relevant to the advancement of the research and education networking community.

Promotion and co ordination of development and testing of innovative networking technologies as well as defining developing and testing new networking services, which can subsequently be introduced by research and education networks or the European backbone infrastructure are activities within this special interest group.

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• Revamped the SIG activities after long break
• Agreed on options to collaborate in future
• Re-stated the fundamental relevance of basic, direct community building around the Cloud

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Streaming, video / web conferencing, multimedia and real-time communications applications all help the flow of information between research and education institutions and the spread of e-learning capabilities. The GÉANT Special Interest Group on Multimedia – SIG-Multimedia –  engages with experts in these areas from across industry and the wider research and education networking community and provides a forum for knowledge exchange.

The group facilitates interoperability among the current technology and service silos, and shares knowledge and information about existing solutions and planned developments and integrations in order to avoid the duplication of efforts where possible. It will advise and demonstrate innovative applications for both the high-end users (demanding 4K, 8K, real-time, interactive, low latency, secure and encrypted solutions) as well as the long-tail users (being educative, smart, easy-to-use, connected and interoperable).

Facilitating technology and service interoperability and sharing knowledge about multimedia solutions:

• sharing experience about streaming, video / web conferencing, multimedia and real-time communications applications
• help the flow of information between research and education institutions and the spread of e-learning capabilities
• engagement with experts in these areas from across industry and the wider research and education networking community
• providing a forum for knowledge exchange
• triggering research by sharing knowledge and information about existing solutions and planned developments and integrations in order to avoid the duplication of efforts where possible
• working out best practices by facilitating interoperability among the current technology and service silos
• advise and demonstrate innovative applications for both the high-end users (demanding 4K, 8K, real-time, interactive, low latency, secure and encrypted solutions) as well as the long-tail users (being educative, smart, easy-to-use, connected and interoperable)

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Marketing and Communications are key to establishing an organisation’s brand, keeping conversations going and driving change.

The Special Interest Group on Marketing Communications promotes collaboration opportunities between research and education networking organisations in Europe and beyond.

More specifically, the group has proved to be an effective platform for the participants to share experience and ideas on strategic planning as well as best practices on the implementation of various activities, i.e. events and services promotion, internal and corporate communications, user engagement, communications campaign, and promotional material production.

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TF-EDU aims to gather information, discuss and develop tools and best practices to address the common issues faced by NRENs with regards to their educational services and activities. The areas of interest include the digital learning environment  – such as Learning Management Systems (LMS), Learning Analytics (LA), Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) –  eduID, Open Educational Resources (OER) and more.

TF-EDU opens a space to enable organisations and individuals to share their own practice (positive and less successful), focussing on two major tracks:

• It serves as a strategic platform for the creation of an overview of the educational technologies landscape in the NREN community and beyond.
• It liaises with interested parties and supports the creation and work of smaller working groups that will dynamically form around specific services, challenges and opportunities in the area of educational technologies.

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1. Organizing the community support for eHealth
2. Organizing the requested Security and Privacy trainings
3. Liaise with the EU Commission and the coming regulations, starting from tthe EU EHDS.
4. Discuss individually with the GÉANT NRENs  about their goals and needs for  eHealth

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1. Provides a forum for gathering and exchanging experiences, ideas, and knowledge on the development, deployment, testing, and best practices related to Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), distributed identity and SSI. To explore related technology such as software and hardware wallets as well as protocols and standards.
2. Engaged NRENs and other interested parties in the R&E community that are deploying DLT infrastructures and services that use distributed ledger technologies; and to offer them a forum to exchange experiences.
3. Promoted collaboration between research and education networking organisations in Europe engaged with identifying specific use-cases and demonstrators to validate the usage of distributed ledgers, distributed identities, and SSI, both as an alternative technology to those currently deployed as well as in support of novel use cases.
4. Liaised with other relevant groups and stakeholders outside the NRENs that are adopting distributed ledger technologies, distributed identities and SSI.