On 12 and 13 June, COcyber held two complementary events: an in-person session in Vilnius focused on critical infrastructure protection, and an online consultation dedicated to civil-defence cooperation. The events gathered experts, partners, and stakeholders to share insights, assess solutions, and contribute to advancing cross-sector cybersecurity practices.

We spoke with the COcyber Batch #1 Ambassadors to reflect on their journey and gather their insights on Europe’s cybersecurity future. Antonio Grasso stresses the importance of regulatory coherence, practical cooperation, and inclusive capacity-building to bridge civilian and defence efforts, highlighting that cybersecurity must be understood as both a strategic and cultural priority across sectors.

We spoke with the COcyber Batch #1 Ambassadors to reflect on their journey and gather their insights on Europe’s cybersecurity future. Eduvigis Ortiz points to the urgent need for structured cooperation between civil and defence sectors, trust-building, and inclusive strategies to address fragmentation and talent gap

At the event “Combatting Fraud in the Digital Age”, our Scientific Lead Georges Ataya presented COcyber’s perspective on bridging fraud prevention and cybersecurity resilience. He emphasized the importance of regulatory alignment, sector cooperation, and long-term investment in cybersecurity capabilities.

COcyber took part in GITEX EUROPE to present the project, highlight the AI Cybersecurity Deephack as a tangible outcome, and engage with stakeholders working across civil and defence innovation. The event underlined growing interest in practical dual-use applications, with positive feedback from both institutional actors and startups already active in the defence space.

In this interview, Team GENSHIELD-AI, third-prize winners of the COcyber AI Cybersecurity Deephack, share how they developed PhishNet — a multilingual phishing detection system. They discuss their dual-use design for civilian and defence applications, the importance of explainability in AI, and their plans to further develop GENSHIELD-AI for real-world deployment.

In this interview, Team MORPH, second-prize winners of the COcyber AI Cybersecurity Deephack, share how they developed a federated learning-based phishing detection system built for dual-use in civilian and defence contexts. They discuss their approach to privacy-preserving AI, adversarial robustness, and their plans to bring MORPH to market through investor engagement and strategic business training.

In this interview, Team ALVAR, winners of the COcyber AI Cybersecurity Deephack — share how they built a scalable, AI-powered phishing detection system designed for both civilian and defense use. They reflect on the importance of modular design, real-time anomaly detection, and their next steps toward real-world deployment.

This edition presents our upcoming best practice consultation event, shares outcomes from the April AI Cybersecurity Deephack, features our participation at GITEX Europe, and highlights key developments from the wider cybersecurity landscape.

The COcyber AI Cybersecurity Deephack brought together students, professionals, and startup founders for a 48-hour challenge to design AI solutions against phishing threats. With dual-use applicability at its core, the event showcased innovative, ethical, and deployable tools bridging civilian and defence cybersecurity needs.