LEWIS – Luxembourg Early-Warning analysis and Information sharing System

Principal Investigator: Prof. Peter Ryan
Funding source(s): Ministry of Economy and Foreign Trade
Researcher: Dr. Richard Clayton

Luxembourg, through its structures like CASES (www.cases.lu) and CIRCL (www.circl.lu) has set up a
series of information security relevant competences centres, mainly in the area of awareness raising,
training and incident response. To enhance these structures in their daily work the Ministry of the
Economy and Foreign Trade wants to develop, with relevant partners from the private and public
sector, a nation‐wide network of sensors, to picture the current cyber‐attacks and malware activities
that are threatening our networks on a daily basis. This will allow a global view of threat levels.
The long term goal for SnT, University of Luxembourg is to contribute with research and analysis,
international contacts, academic support and evaluation, as well as develop high competence in the
field of cyber‐attacks and malware. As a first phase, a pilot study will be conducted by SnT as described
below.

Scoping a phishing/e‐crime agenda for Luxembourg

Luxembourg, in common with many other countries, is moving rapidly towards an “online economy”
where citizens make extensive use of the Internet to interact with the Government, and with firms
selling goods and services. This promises significant improvements in convenience, responsiveness,
personalisation and significantly lower transaction costs. This rosy future will not come about if there
is a collapse in trust in the Internet as a safe way of communicating, or if the perception arises that
personal data will be disclosed, bank accounts looted, or fraud become widespread. Hence, a growing
understanding of, and development of countermeasures to, phishing and other types of e‐crime is of
key importance not only in preventing criminality per se, but in preserving the trust of Luxembourg
citizens in an online future.
Unlike other countries, Luxembourg has a relatively large banking sector that has specific concerns
about phishing, and the prevalence of malware such as keyloggers. However, since the Grand Duchy is
physically compact, it will be very much easier than in larger countries to coordinate efforts between
all relevant stakeholders.