TRANSCEND: The €5M Shield Breaking The Chain Of Disruptions

Five years after the pandemic disrupted global supply chains, a Luxembourg consortium is developing a €5m tech solution to combat cyber and non-cyber threats against European freight infrastructure.

Source : siliconluxembourg.lu
Publication date : 01/16/2025

It is hoped that the Transport resilience against cyber and non-cyber events to prevent network disruptions (TRANSCEND) project will make empty supermarket shelves and medical equipment shortages a thing of the past.

With its raft of measures for freight operators including tools, guidelines and technological solutions, TRANSCEND aims to reduce the risk of supply chain disruptions, boost freight resilience and protect its transport networks. A key outcome will be the creation of a “Control Tower”, a digital platform showing stakeholders threats and risks, among other intelligence. 

The project will pilot solutions across five modes of transport in Europe: air, in-land waterways, maritime shipping, rail and road.

Economic importance

Spanning three years, the research will benefit a critical sector within the European economy. In 2024, the value of EU-international import and export goods amounted to over €400b per month. Within the bloc, imports and exports accounted for €460b in trade, according to Eurostat.

TRANSCEND, which received €4.38m from the European Commission, is one of two projects benefiting from the Horizon Europe research funding programme. The second beneficiary is VIGIMARE, focusing on resilience of submarine infrastructure such as communications and power cables as well as gas pipelines, and developed by LAUREA University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland.

The international consortium counts seven Luxembourg partners, including the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, which announced the initiative on Tuesday. They are joined by the University of Luxembourg, the Luxembourg House of Cybersecurity, Cargolux Airlines International, The  Haut-Commissariat à la Protection Nationale, the Institut Luxembourgeois de regulation and, Netcompany-Intrasoft, the largest single donor after the European Commission. NATO is also a partner.

The cost of freight disruption

In recent years, freight disruptions have become increasingly frequent, significantly hitting company margins as well as consumer budgets. When the Evergreen container ship blocked the Suez Canal in March 2021, it cost an estimated $10b in losses daily. Meanwhile, flight restrictions and fuel costs from longer routes as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove up the cost of transport goods by air.

Cyber threats are also on the rise. Transport and logistics are a prime target for cyber attacks. These can take the form of Ransomware, attacks which block infrastructure or steal data unless a ransom is paid. Luxembourg experiences around 1,000 reported cyber attacks each year, of which up to 30 are considered critical.

Maersk ransomware

“A notable example is the ransomware attack on logistics company Maersk, which disrupted operations for weeks,” said Pascal Steichen, CEO of the Luxembourg House of Cybersecurity.

In 2017 the Danish shipping and logistics conglomerate was the subject of a malware infection, resulting in an outage that left it unable to process shipping orders until systems were restored. Revenues from several of the company’s shipping container lines were frozen for weeks, resulting in losses of up to $300m.

Steichen explained that cyber attacks can be opportunistic or state-sponsored, with the latter constituting a small percentage but posing significant threats. “State-sponsored attacks are often well-prepared and difficult to trace, sometimes taking months to detect,” he said, adding: “Prevention involves maintaining separate, secure backup systems.”

Jess Bauldry

www.siliconluxembourg.lu/transcend-the-e5m-shield-breaking-the-chain-of-disruptions/