The European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) has launched a cluster of three Horizon Europe projects to develop generative‑AI tools for cybersecurity, with explicit validation in automotive use cases. The initiative carries roughly EUR 42 million of EU support and brings together more than 70 partners across 14 member states and the UK.
What the projects are
The three projects — AICYROS, AIGENTIC and GENESIS‑AI — formally started on 1 October 2026 and are scheduled to run for 36 months. AICYROS will create a GenAI‑powered cyber‑risk “operational shield” and be validated in telecom, industry, robotics, software‑defined vehicles, healthcare, media and smart cities. AIGENTIC, coordinated by the University of Piraeus Research Center, will build an auditable, guard‑railed GenAI agent ecosystem and validate it in nine use cases that explicitly include automotive. GENESIS‑AI, coordinated by the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, focuses on a self‑improving, regulation‑aware GenAI defence for complex infrastructures; its industrial partners include Siemens, Airbus and Bosch.
Why this matters to Central and Eastern Europe
The inclusion of GENESIS‑AI’s coordinating partner in Zagreb places one of the cluster’s technical leads inside the CEE region and gives local suppliers, research centres and vehicle integrators a direct route into EU‑funded work on AI‑driven cyber defences for vehicles and related infrastructure. The projects’ cross‑sector validation — notably a specific mention of software‑defined vehicles and automotive use cases — means testbeds, threat models and mitigation tools developed under the programmes can be applied to carmakers, tier‑one suppliers and logistics operators across Central and Eastern Europe.
