The final review of the CS-AWARE project took place on 25 November 2020. We weren’t able to meet face to face with consortium partners, the independent reviewers and our Project Officer. Our last “physical”, collocated meeting took place in Milano last February and few weeks later our interim review in Brussels. Then Corona and Covid19 took over our normality.

Projects start usually with high hopes and promises and during their lifetime make reductions to meet ends. Most of the people involved in the planning of a research project leave the boat soon after – too busy too important too overloaded to follow daily work and communications. Our project was different to the majority: we kept all the ties with each other and managed to even build on them to bring some longer lasting impact. We all are supposed to care for impact. Our proposals have a dedicated section and there we can promise a lot. What counts is what we deliver at the end.

The independent reviewers mention in their Final Consolidated Review Report (Section 2: Significant results linked to dissemination, exploitation and impact potential) that our ‘[p]roject has delivered exceptional results with significant immediate or potential impact’. As for our ‘notable exploitable results’ they enlist the following:

  • Execution of Pilots in final form in 2 municipalities. Exploitable by all partners, in particular by the two municipalities, should they wish to adopt the bespoke CS-AWARE solutions. In the case of the CS-AWARE consortium, partner M[unicipality] L[arissa] has expressed strong interest to use the platform for their cybersecurity needs.
  •  Evaluation of pilots’ results. Exploitable by all partners of the consortium, the scientific results (SSM methodology applied to cybersecurity, evaluation outcomes and lessons learnt) are publishable as advancement to knowledge.
  • Formation of spin out company for further exploitation of CS-AWARE framework and provision of relevant consulting services to setup tailored CS-AWARE platform to the needs of the concerned entity. Potential to be exploited by those partners participating in the spin-out.

Expected impact is high, should the marketability aspects get positively resolved in the post-pandemic funding landscape.

From now on, the CS-AWARE project web page will give its place to the CS-AWARE spin out. This is the best form of demonstrating continuity and commitment to achieve a higher aim.

Learning to win proposals may make people practice this as their main profession. Many entities (both private and public) all over Europe have achieved high levels of perfectionism to this end. However, this is not a sustainable business model. The aim of any research or innovation action (as CS-AWARE has been) are to offer the opportunity for further exploitation. In our case this means one thing only: go-to-market. And this is what we intend to do.

The web page of the CS-AWARE spin out shall be subject of transformation and transition: many of the features that made sense to include for the project purposes will stay but the structure will change to place in the centre the business and commercial development activities.

Here we would like to thank all our partners and also our reviewers and our Project Officer who helped to make CS-AWARE a successful research and innovation project. Now our undivided attention goes to making CS-AWARE a commercial success!

The CS-AWARE spin-out team.