SECRET (SECurity of Railways against Electromagnetic aTtacks) is a three year research project co-funded by the European Commission in the framework of the 4th call for proposals under the 7th Framework Programme. The project aims to assess the risks and consequences of EM attacks on the rail infrastructure, to identify preventive and recovery measures and to develop protection solutions to ensure the security of the rail network, subject to intentional electromagnetic (EM) interferences, which can disturb a large number of command-control, communication and signalling systems.
The SECRET project held its kick-off meeting on 2 October 2012 in Brussels at the invitation of IFSTTAR, the coordinator of the project. The EU project officer introduced the project followed by the EU Financial officer who presented the financial and legal aspects. The rest of the morning was dedicated to the introduction of each partner and to the project as a whole.

The consortium:

The afternoon was allocated to a presentation of the administrative aspects of the project by ERT, the technical part by IFSTTAR and a detailed introduction of the work packages with a presentation from SNCF on the vulnerable components of the railway system. This was followed by a presentation focusing on the potential attack on EM systems by POLITO, the concept and properties of security architecture by TRIALOG, and finally an overview on Intelligence Technologies by Zanasi.

UIC, as leader of WP6, introduced the dissemination and exploitation of the results. The dissemination will be carried out through various means: implementation of a website, organisation of workshops and presentation of the project among the various UIC bodies interested by the topic. A specific dissemination task is dedicated to managing the potentially sensitive information (in case of major EM vulnerability demonstrated) to inform policy makers of the risks.