Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.


GroupPenetrationRetentionKnowledge base and reusable resultsActiveImpactActivitiesComments
TF-CSIRT

Total attendees: 699

NREN / REN attendees: 90

Countries: 54 

3 meetings:


  • September:
180
  • 168 participants
  • March:
240
  • 352  participants
  • May:
TBD
  • 180

September: 


March: 


May:


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 2021, TF-CSIRT has had the following impact:

 - supported information sharing and contacts for specific security incidents. 

 - defined a position on support for incident sharing within GDPR and the proposed NIS2 Directive. 

 - seen over 80% of teams respond to the reaction test within 24 hours.

 - defined a future model to ensure the sustainability of TF-CSIRT and its services. 

 - increased the number of accredited teams by 15 and the number of certified teams by 4. 

 September:

March:

  • New bylaws for OpenCSIRT Foundation drafted by notary.
  • TRANSITS returns to face to face teaching. 
  • March reaction test completed - several issues with spam blocking identified. 
  • Joint meeting with FIRST.
  • Emergency meeting to discuss support for Ukraine and issues with Russian and Belarussian teams led to RU and BY teams being suspended from Trusted Introducer. 

May: 

  • First face to face meeting in 2.5 years!
  • Capture the Flag exercise planned

SIG-ISM

X meeting:

  • October (still to take place)
TF-RED

X meeting:

  • October (still to take place)
SIG-MSP

X meeting:

  • September: 41 participants

Total attendees: 98

NREN / REN attendees: 50

Countries: 26

2 meetings:

  • October 2021: 48 participants
  • April 2022: 50 participants
  • October meeting: 

https://wiki.geant.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=362053735

  • April meeting: https://events.geant.org/event/1188/
    • Top 10 risks for Research and Education

      Introduction
      COBIT 5 risk approach
      ENISA Threat Landscape (October) 2021
      Top 10 threats for R&E

    • Performance testing How well is your NREN prepared for business continuity?
    • Looking ahead:
      • The European R&E security intelligence hub

        GN5-1 WP8

      • Strategic Advisory Committee on Security

    • WISE Community Introduction
    • SCI Trust Framework - maturity assessment - HowTo Guidance
    • Software Vulnerability Handling WG
    • SCI-WG - maintenance of AARC PDK
    • EOSC Security
    • EOSC Security Incident Response
    • Incident Response and Threat Intelligence WG

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

Meetings serve to keep participants updated on current and upcoming challenges for security management.

New regulations like NIS-2 are casting their shadows ahead, still a long time away but also a lot to prepare for. 

The GÉANT Security Roadmap for the future and steps forward. Sharing organizations security best practice and how each NREN looks at security operations.

Topic introduction on "Zero Trust".
The WISE Community included updates from its working groups, including Risk Assessment, Software Vulnerability Handling best practice, Incident Response and Threat Intelligence, and Security for Collaborating Infrastructures (SCI).

Also presentations on the challenges of handling security risk in EOSC Project, a review of developments in Trust between the various operational security groups around the world, guidance for maturity assessment against the SCI Trust Framework and plans to maintain and develop the AARC Policy Development Kit.

Analysis of cyber-attack trends - Emergency Cyber Surveillance Threats – how to prepare and how to protect organizations.

Scanning new Legislation in EU for cybersecurity & some differences in UK (reality after Brexit)

Preparation of next Phase of GÉANT Project. 


TF-RED

Total attendees: 18

NREN / REN attendees: 11

Countries: 13

1 meeting:


  • October: 18 Participants


RDA/TF-RED Research data lifecycle meetings: Multiple meetings with around 25 individual participants in total across all meetings.

Values, vision and Strategy Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n4FIIkI8S-BsnlpYHRpjWzAeB5m-6g42W7a7-dY3wSY/edit?usp=sharing


TF-RED Research Engagement Blueprint document: https://geant.box.com/s/kpw9m13dz4nj2wt4b1ir0qlt0lckcf05


TF-RED and EaPConnect Research Engagement Analysis: https://geant.box.com/s/epxoe8jnnbdvypr5qje39y628jaezsed


Past TF-REDs:

TF-RED All Hands Autumn 2021

TF-RED All Hands VC October 2020

TF-RED All Hands VC June 2020

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 2021, TF-RED has had the following impact:

 - Developed a research engagement blueprint document. 

 - Investigated the research data lifecycle in collaboration with partners from RDA. 

 - Provided a forum for strategy discussions for data movement.


TF-RED Research Engagement Blueprint document: https://geant.box.com/s/kpw9m13dz4nj2wt4b1ir0qlt0lckcf05


TF-RED and EaPConnect Research Engagement Analysis: https://geant.box.com/s/epxoe8jnnbdvypr5qje39y628jaezsed


Autumn 2021 VC: TF-RED All Hands Autumn 2021


Research Data Lifecycle: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1y_74WmZO8J1vRHbH7HdwP1F7tnuTWdX7pPtSCJiB6RM/edit?usp=sharing


SIG-MSP

Total attendees: 70

NREN / REN attendees: 62

Countries: 29

2 meetings:

  • September: 41 participants
  • March 2022: 30 participants
  • September
October
October

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.
  • September:
    • How are external factors impacting on NRENs service portfolios
    • NIS directive update
    • Strategic Plans update
  • March:
    • Joint meeting with SIG-Marcomms
    • How and why AARNet has been evolving and increasing its training activities - Jane Gifford (AARnet)
    • Jisc's training portfolio and business model - Rebecca Burningham (Jisc’s Training Manager) 
    • Why training does not (currently) fit in CANARIE's strategic plan for services and marketing communications - Kathryn Anthonisen
    • SURF - experiences using GAFAM trainings - Michel Wets (SURF)
    • GLAD - what's in it for the NRENs? - Sarah Hughes (GLAD, GÉANT Learning and Development)
    • Maintaining a training programme in the long-term: TRANSITS - Nicole Harris and Casper Dreef (GÉANT)
    • CSC and PRACE training & service reporting as a marketing tool - Tiina Leiponen and Harri Kuusisto (CSC)
    • Training experience and challenges at ARNES - Tomi Dolenc (ARNES)

SIG-NOC

X meeting:

  • December
  • 45 Participants

Total attendees: 129

NREN / REN attendees: 84

Countries: 33

3 meetings:

  • June 2021: 51 participants
  • December 2021: 45 Participants
  • May 2022: 33 participants

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.

  • June:
  • December:
    • GÉANT Network refresh
    • An update on the progress made to date in the GN4-3N refresh project.
    • Experiences of integrating of new Inventory Management System
    • Timemap: latency and jitter monitoring tool

SIG-NGN

X meeting:

  • Month
  • XX Participants
SIG-CISS

X meeting:

  • Month
  • XX Participants
SIG-Multimedia

X meeting:

  • Month
  • XX Participants
SIG-Marcomms

Total attendees: 194

NREN / REN attendees: 120

Countries: 34 

3 meetings:

  • December 2021: 89 participants
  • February 2022: 74 participants
  • May 2022: 31 participants (but the event still need to take place)



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.

  • December:
    • What's happening in the field...stories from the front line beyond 100G
      • SmartOptics
      • ESnet
      • GEANT
      • CESNET
      • SURF
  • February:
    • Network applications beyond data packet
      • Earthquake detection - Charlotte Krawczyk, Phillippe Jousset (GFZ)
      • QUANT-NET: Quantum  Application Network Testbed - Inder Monga (ESnet)
  • May 2022:
    • Low Orbit Satellites
      • HydRON project - Josep Maria Perdigues Armengol (ESA)
      • Developing a simulation framework and efficient data transport for low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations - George Parisis (University of Sussex)
    • 5G networks for R&E
      • Faelix / CloudNet - Marek Isalski
      • Extending ESnet to the Wireless Edge: Lessons Learned - Andrew Wiedlea (ESnet)

SIG-CISS

Total attendees: 35

NREN / REN attendees: N/A

Countries: N/A 

1 meeting:

  • February 2022: 35 Participants



  • Revamped the SIG activites after long break
  • Agreed on options to collaborate in future
  • Re-stated the fundamenal relevance of basic, direct community buidling around the Cloud
  • Planning of the next SIG-CISS at TNC22.
  • Organizing a dedicated SIG on the topic of 
    Storage services for the User Community
  • Currently proposing a Cloud Operators
    BoF at TNC22

SIG-Multimedia

Total attendees: 48

NREN / REN attendees: 37

Countries: 26

2 meetings:

  • February 2022: 40 participant
  • May 2022:  12 participants (but the event still needs to take place)

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)


  • February:
    • What's happening in the field...

      • KIFU
      • FCCN | FCT
      • CESNET
      • PSNC
  • May:
    • Interactive video solution
      • H5P functionalities, cases of use in education and integrations using your API - Ryan Barber (Joubel)
      • Kaltura player (free solution) as well as the entire Kaltura solution (on-prem, hybrid or cloud based) - Marcin Dabrowski (PSNC)
    • VR solutions
      • VRARA (TBC)
      • Jisc experiences with Edify PoC, Labster and Mindscape Commons - Lisa Hewitt (Jisc)

SIG-Marcomms

Total attendees: 147

NREN / REN attendees: 117

Countries: 44

3 meetings:

  • June 2021: 55 participants
  • September 2021: 44 participants
  • March 2022: 48 participants 

X meeting:

September: 42 participants 

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.

  • June:
    • NREN updates

      • Communications and engagement - a REANNZ perspective

      • Crisis communications lessons learned - Belnet

      • Northern Connectivity

      • Diversity and inclusion: HEAnet and pride

    • AfricaConnect 10 years! - marcomms evolution, activities and impacts for NRENs and the project 
    • GÉANT project:
      • Cybersecurity month 2021
    • Bella project marcomms
  •  September
September

TF-EDU

Total attendees: 165

NREN / REN attendees: 104

Countries: 49

2

X

meetings:

  • June: 113 participant
  • October: 52 participants

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.
  • June:
    • NRENs have a role in being a trusted partner for providing safe, secure and reliable access to educational resources, tools and supporting educational institutions with digitalising the administration.
    • Data infrastructure for education - enabling interoperable and standardized solution. 
  • October:
    • TF-EDU strategic directions 2022 - getting feedback from the TF-EDU membership - additional item about open standards
    • Going digital: eduID, lifelong learning identities, student information systems
    • Key take aways for post-pandemic NREN educational service focus

TF-eHEALTH

X meeting:

  • Month
  • XX Participants

Total attendees: 60

NREN / REN attendees: 34

Countries: 28

1 meeting:

  • June 2021: 60 Participants 
  • Multiple meetings of the eH TF Steering Committe
    ( Dec, Feb, Apr)

  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
  • Agreed on the work plan
  • Worked on the first deliverable: initial 
    gap analysis. 
  • Organized the first Security and Privacy 
    training for eHealth in collaboration with GN4-3
    WP8 - on July 5-6, 2022

  • Carried out 1:1 discussions on eHealth with 
    individual NRENs

TF-DLT

Total attendees: 64

NREN / REN attendees: 39

Countries: 20

4 meetings:

  • October: 16 participants
  • December: 19 participants
  • February: 21 participants
  • April: 15 participants

October: Kick Off Meeting 27th October 2021 Notes

December: 2nd TF-DLT Meeting 14th December 2021 Notes

February: 3rd TF-DLT Meeting (February 2022) Notes

April: 4th TF-DLT Meeting (April 2022) Notes



  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.

October:

  • Kick off meeting
  • Scoping
  • Terms of reference

December: Information sharing:

  • The Finnish IT Center for Science proof of concept for using SSI to managing permissions to sensitive human genomic datasets
  • Community Initiatives: Wallet ID + Federated ID + SSI
  • User-centric model vs federation-centric model

February: Information sharing:

  • Presentation reporting on EBSI (results, challenges, with Q&A)
  • Description of three proposed use cases

April: Information sharing:

  • Description of three proposed use cases + Q&A (continued)
  • Dragonfly blockchain
  • Guest Speaker from the GEANT Innovation Programme: Impact of European Digital Identity Wallets on NRENs
TF-DLT

X meeting:

  • Month
  • XX Participants