February 25, 2025
eBOS attended & hosted the 4th plenary meeting of the HORIZON Europe project SAFE-6G
On February 12th and 13th, 2025, the project SAFE-6G, entitled ‘Smart and Adaptive Framework for Enhancing Trust in 6G Networks’, held its 4th physical plenary meeting in Nicosia, Cyprus, hosted by eBOS Technologies. This 36-month EU-funded Innovation Action, funded under the HORIZON Europe programme, officially started on January 1st, 2024.
The meeting was chaired and hosted by Dr Zouzias Dimitris, R&D Project Manager at eBOS Technologies Ltd. All 13 project partners physically participated in the meeting, and more than 10 participants participated online. The meeting featured partners’ presentations on the project’s progress and future plans.
Telefónica Innovation Digital, serving as both the WP1 leader and project coordinator, initiated the meeting with a brief overview of SAFE-6G activities, updates on the project’s work plan, current status, key milestones, submitted deliverables, challenges, and implementation timelines.
Representing eBOS at the event were Dr. Marilena Paraskeva, R&D Project Manager, Dr. Kyriaki Psara, Senior R&D Project Manager, and Epifanios Chatzievangelou, R&D Software Developer. Their active participation highlighted eBOS’s vital contributions to the project’s success.
During the plenary, eBOS led discussions in Work Package 7 (WP7), with Dr. Paraskeva presenting the latest progress and next steps. WP7 focuses on dissemination, commercialisation, and standardisation, essential pillars to maximise the project’s visibility, engage stakeholders, and ensure a lasting impact beyond the project lifecycle.
Each WP leader, supported by task leaders, provided insights into their respective work packages’ progress. Beyond the technical objectives, the discussion highlighted the framework’s innovative aspects, reference architecture design, and the implementation roadmap for the year. Through active collaboration among partners, a comprehensive view of the SAFE-6G architecture emerged, along with its requirements and specifications for the intended outcomes. Updates on each task covered essential metrics for implementation, the development of SAFE-6G’s core interfaces, the platform’s APIs, Machine Learning Operations integration needs, interface requirements for the deployment phase, and the status of use cases.
Current network architectures are built to support a wide range of services, following an operator-controlled approach. This has led to significant, centralised network components like mobility management, serving gateways, and packet data network gateways in 4G, as well as functions like Access Management and User Plane Functions in 5G, which handle multiple users at once. However, as the number of connected devices and users increases, these centralized systems can become bottlenecks, limiting performance and efficiency. The current 5G security framework is designed for centralized networks, where trust between different network components is established through protocols rather than by analysing device and network behaviour.
To address these challenges, future networks need to shift toward a user-centric model—one of the defining features of 6G. This approach allows users to have more control over network services, including customization, configuration, and management. Implementing a user-centric 6G network requires a major redesign of the core network. A distributed edge-cloud system and an open network structure will drive this redesign. However, this transition also introduces new security risks.
In the envisioned SAFE- 6G ecosystem, trusted connections are essential for all participants. Security and privacy will need to be embedded as fundamental features, creating a more comprehensive trust model. As a result, SAFE-6G will move beyond just security concerns. It will adopt a broader, more holistic approach that includes safety, privacy, resilience, and reliability as core principles, ensuring a more secure and robust network for the future.
eBOS, as the leader of Task 4.2 and in charge of developing the platform’s User-Centric Safety Function, presented the function’s architecture, the corresponding development plan by M18, and a comprehensive breakdown of the planned tasks towards reaching this goal. A proposed architecture for local Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Agents across the entire network was presented for efficient Load Distribution, Information Management and Orchestration. In addition, the interdependencies between the Safety Function, its embedded Artificial Intelligence Agent and the platform’s Machine Learning Operations were discussed and analysed to better align with the rest of the consortium’s development efforts.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. SAFE-6G project has received funding from the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101139031.
