A recently published report – jointly produced and released by Europol and Eurojust – offers an update on a relevant and interesting subject for all SIMARGL stakeholders. The second report of the Observatory Function on Encryption is aimed at law enforcement, judiciaries and policy makers as a reference source on the latest technical and legislative developments around encryption.

This paper builds on the objectives of the first report, released in Jan 2019, to provide an overview of the state of play on encryption from the perspective of the law enforcement and judicial communities. The current environment in which criminals are able to exploit encryption and other security vulnerabilities remains challenging for the judicial and law enforcement authorities of EU Member States, the report authors emphasise.

In order to improve cyber attacks detection, we have started SIMARGL (Secure Intelligent Methods for Advanced Recognition of Malware and Stegomalware, Grant Agreement No 833042), a three-year project, on the 1st of May 2019. SIMARGL kick-off meeting was held on 13th – 14th of May at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany.

SIMARGL is a project co-funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020 programme, to combat the pressing problem of malware. It aims to tackle the new challenges in the cybersecurity field, including information hiding methods, network anomalies, stegomalware, ransomware and mobile malware. SIMARGL will offer an integrated and validated toolkit improving European cyber security.