On March 14, the final evaluation of SecureCloud was performed, which is a project developed in the scope of 3rd Coordinated Call between the European Union and Brazil focusing on safe cloud applications.  The initiative closed its cycle in the program of the Coordinated Calls between the European Union and Brazil positively, according to the analysis of evaluators and coordinators of the European Commission and Research and Development Center in Digital Technologies for Information and Communication (CTIC/RNP), which represents the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (MCTIC). The event was held at Lactec, in Curitiba.

SecureCloud developed safe solutions for cloud applications, offering guarantees and protection against malicious users by a customized, modular, flexible and interoperable solution. Based on a recent technology, developed in hardware by Intel, called SGX, the project offers a series of micro-services for developing safe cloud applications, including big data. These factors become the initiative applicable to the information safety in different scenarios, such as privacy of users in cloud services, music and video streaming, protection of sensitive information of patients in health settings and users of smart electric meters.

“The impact of this project on the society is surprising. The companies of the cloud computing sector that participate in the consortium already integrated parts of the solutions developed in its systems. One startup was created due to the results of the project and the National Electrical System Operator (ONS) is already studying the compliance with solutions of SecureCloud”, said the coordinator of CTIC, Wanderson Paim.

Evaluation by goals and objectives

In the evaluation process, it was verified if the project achieved the goals and objectives set out in the proposal approved, in addition to other criteria, such as the integration of solutions developed, as well as the synergies between the Brazilian and European teams. “The scope of this results required considerable efforts of coordination and research since the project involved 14 institutions: six companies, six universities, and two research institutes spread all over Brazil and Europe. Only in Brazil, 60 scholarship researchers were hired, as well as a voluntary team working in the companies. In other words, in addition to the research and technological challenge, the project was able to explore completely the synergy among different cultures and realities, defining the expectations and overcoming the language differences, the distance and the time zone, which are specific challenges for the projects of international cooperation", said Paim.

Project background

One of the members of SecureCloud is the professor of the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), Andrey Brito. He explained that some Brazilian partners, such as the Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPR) and UFCG, informally cooperated to other European partners – Technische Universität de Dresden and the University of Neuchâtel. For the group, the launch of the 3rd Coordinated Call between the European Union and Brazil was able to consolidate the project.

"We had many promising ideas, but a mechanism was missing to strengthen and consolidate the cooperation. The 3rd call perfectly suited with this objective. We were able to include other partners who were working in related areas and could help to enable a more complete scope from the basic technology for the confidential computing until big data services and applications using real data and requirements. Dozens of young researchers were able to gain valuable experience in cooperative work at the international level. Moreover, the existing groups were able to expand their knowledge in a strategic sub-area of cloud computing, which up until then was dominated in Brazil", he said.

About the future perspectives, Brito explains that participation in the 3rd call allowed other projects were formatted inside the SecureCloud. “They will expand the research, also increasing the scope of the current results by means of dissemination activities. In addition to the new research projects, a startup (SCONTAIN) is already under operation and partner companies (such as ChocolateCloud and CloudSigma) are already including project-based technologies in products that will hit the market soon" - he said.

For more information on the project, please access www.securecloudproject.eu.