Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) is pleased to announce that it is organising for the first time the Cyber Innovation Forum (CIF).

The Cyber Innovation Forum aims to bring together all relevant players within law enforcement, private industry and academia to exchange knowledge, expertise and experience. At the same time, the goal is to identify cutting-edge cyber innovation and transformative solutions in order to advance EU law enforcement’s capability to prevent, detect, and investigate cybercrime.

The Cyber Innovation Forum will take place at Europol’s Headquarters in The Hague from 18 to 19 June 2024. The conference is open to representatives of law enforcement, the private industry, the public sector and academia. Further information related to registration will be announced in due time.

We invite contributions related to innovative developments that may have an impact on preventing and combatting the different forms of cybercrime (cyber-enabled crime, cyber-dependent crime, child sexual exploitation), leveraging the use of new technologies.

Please find below a non-comprehensive list of areas of interest:

AI (ML, Automation, Robotics, Tool development and testing, etc.)
Quantum computing
5G, 6G
Extended reality (AR/VR/Digital twins)
IoT, Intelligent assistants and smart policing
De-anonymisation techniques
Penetration testing, Ethical hacking and Cyber incident response
Vulnerability management
Digital forensics
Legal challenges (Legislative, regulatory and compliance standards and/or tools that facilitate the use of innovative techniques)
Capacity building and prevention
Biometrics: Face recognition, ETCT
Steganography

The above list is non-exhaustive. We welcome new, original ideas to that are aimed at helping the fight against cybercrime.

Submitting a proposal
The proposal can be a product of previous research, case investigation/examination or a project. Authors are encouraged to demonstrate the practical applicability of their work.

Submissions must include:
Title and topic of the paper
The candidate’s name and entity/organisation/company
An abstract-length summary of about 500 words that clearly outlines the content of the proposal
Background information (e.g., a brief explanation of context of the selected topic, reference to relevant research papers)
Proposals must be submitted via the following link:

https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/EC3CIF24Submission

Submissions will undergo an objective review by Europol to select the most relevant proposals in order to offer a diverse agenda. We reserve the right to only contact the authors of selected proposals who will be invited to present their work at the Cyber Innovation Forum. Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered for the invitees.

Important dates
The deadline to submit proposals is 23:59 UTC+1, 27 May 2024
We will notify the selected contributors before the end of May 2024
The EC3 Cyber Innovation Forum 2024 will take place on 18 – 19 June 2024
Awards
The three most innovative proposals will receive a recognition award during the conference.

Further information
For enquiries regarding submission and the EC3 Cyber Innovation Forum in general, please contact: O3-22@europol.europa.eu.

We look forward to receiving your contributions!