1. P4 langue syntax and similar technologies
2. Domains of application
3. Constraints and limitations of the language
4. Future directions and new challenges that will arise with the wide adoption of the language

The first research excellence award for the academic year 2020-2021 for the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Western Macedonia was awarded to Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis, director of the ITHACA Lab, and Ph.D. candidate Dimitrios Pliatsios, for their publication “A Survey on SCADA Systems: Secure Protocols, Incidents, Threats and Tactics”. Their research work was published in the IEEE Communication Surveys & Tutorials journal, which publishes tutorials and surveys covering all aspects of telecommunications and features an impact factor of 25.249.

In “A Survey on SCADA Systems: Secure Protocols, Incidents, Threats and Tactics”, an overview of SCADA architectures and industrial communication protocols is provided, along with a presentation of SCADA security objectives, vulnerabilities, and high-impact cybersecurity incidents against critical infrastructures. Additionally, an extensive review of the security methods and tactics aiming to secure SCADA systems is carried out. Finally, the state-of-art regarding SCADA cybersecurity, as well as the future research trends, are analyzed.

Associate Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis, director of ITHACA Lab, is included amongst the top 2% of scientists worldwide with the greatest impact for the year 2020 in his research area, according to a study conducted by Stanford University, entitled "Data for updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators". A total of 9 researchers and academic staff from the University of Western Macedonia are included in the list, verifying the high quality research activities taking place in the University.

Dimitrios Pliatsios presented the paper entitled "Semi-Grant-Free Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for Tactile Internet of Things" in the 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

It is evident that IoT is entering multiple fields of everyday life. The proliferation of IoT devices as well as the numerous use cases reveal the very promising potentials of IoT in revolutionizing several aspects of common activities as well as business processes. The new challenge is to identify efficient ways of integrating IoT technologies in contemporary applications exploiting the potentials of real-time monitoring, interactive control, self-management, and data analytics towards “smart” behavior and enhanced performance.

The main scope of the “IoT Applications and Industry 4.0” (IoTI4) workshop is to identify and promote new techniques for the realization of promising IoT applications in various areas, including Industry 4.0 scenarios. The workshop focuses on Industrial Internet of Things systems and applications, which represent the highest value segment of the IoT market. The heavy research endeavors of last years have provided efficient solutions and enhanced technologies that enable the creation of such a network, overcoming several challenges stemming from the special attributes of device-to-device communications, embedded devices, and big data management.

More information: http://ioti4-2021.web.uowm.gr/

Organizing Committee

Thomas Lagkas, International Hellenic University, Greece

Panagiotis Sarigiannidis, University of Western Macedonia, Greece

John Soldatos, Athens Information Technology, Greece

Αssociate Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis presented the objectives, activities, and latest results of the SPEAR research project.

Also, Dimitrios Pliatsios presented a paper entitled "A Dynamic Recommendation-based Trust Scheme for the Smart Grid" in Technical Session 3 – Security Models and Trust Schemes.

Paper Abstract: The integration of the internet of things (IoT) concept into the traditional electricity grid introduces several critical vulnerabilities. Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) can be effective countermeasures against cyberattacks, however, they require considerable computational and storage resources. As IoT-enabled metering devices have limited resources, IDSs cannot efficiently ensure security. To this end, trust evaluation schemes have emerged as promising solutions toward protecting resource-constrained metering devices. In this work, we proposed a trust evaluation scheme for the smart grid, that is based on direct trust evaluation and recommendation. The proposed hierarchical scheme is able to evaluate the trustiness of each metering device without requiring any significant modifications to the already deployed infrastructure. Additionally, the proposed scheme features is dynamic, meaning that it is robust against non-adversarial events that negatively impact the device’s trustiness. To validate the performance of the proposed scheme, we carry out network-level simulations and investigate how the various network parameters impact the trust evaluation performance

The SecSoft workshop is a joint initiative from EU Cyber-Security projects: ASTRID, CYBER-TRUST, GUARD, SIMARGL, DATAVAULTS, RAINBOW, PALANTIR and SPEAR.

Αssociate Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis participated in the 10th International Symposium on Food Technologies, where he presented the objectives, aims, and expected impact of the SmartRoot project.

The 10th International Symposium on Food Technology aims to present the latest creations in the field of food technology, providing companies from different European countries with an excellent opportunity to hold bilateral meetings aimed at establishing technology cooperation agreements.
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In conjunction with the ARES workshops EU Projects Symposium 2021 at 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2021 – http://www.ares-conference.eu).

The EPESec 2021 workshop aims at collecting the most relevant ongoing research efforts in the EPES security field. It also serves as a forum for relevant projects in order to disseminate their security-related results, boost cooperation, and foster the development of the EPES Security Community made of security experts and practitioners.

The workshop is co-organized from the following H2020 R&D projects:

SDN-microSENSE project: https://www.sdnmicrosense.eu/

CYBER-TRUST project: https://cyber-trust.eu/

EnergyShield:  https://energy-shield.eu/

FORESIGHT: project: https://foresight-h2020.eu/

PHOENIX: https://phoenix-h2020.eu/

SPEAR: https://www.spear2020.eu/

You can find more details in the following page: https://www.ares-conference.eu/workshops-eu-symposium/epesec-2021/

Αssociate Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis participated in a roundtable discussion entitled Visionary Concepts. The discussion was part of the Next Generation IoT and Edge Computing Strategy Forum organized by the European Commission in collaboration with EU-IoT.

The virtual forum aims at gathering top technology experts from across several digital and vertical domains, as well as corporate-strategy level representatives to exchange views on priorities, challenges and opportunities, and establish a commonly shared strategic European vision for the next-generation IoT and (far) edge computing. With its medium-term time perspective, this initiative is part of the implementation of the European data and cloud strategy, and will be supported by a research and innovation theme on Cloud-to-Edge-to-IoT under the first Work Programme of Horizon Europe.

Associate Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis, Director of ITHACA, performed an invited presentation on the Next Generation Networks and Internet of Things workshop, organized by the IEEE Student Branch of the University of Western Macedonia for the Global IoT day. His presentation entitled "Next Generation Internet of Things: Modern Applications", introduced the actions and research areas of the ITHACA Lab.

SPEAR and SDN-microSENSE are co-organizing the 2021 IEEE CSR Workshop on Electrical Power and Energy Systems Security, Privacy and Resilience (EPES-SPR).


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Due to the COVID-19 emergency situation, the 6th plenary meeting of the SPEAR project took place virtually during 15 and 16 January 2021.

Towards the end of the project and the final evaluation by the end-users, the meeting was focused on the progress of deploying the SPEAR platform on each of the four pilots, namely, a) the VETS hydropower plant, b) the substation laboratory at Tecnalia, c) Both the Testing, Research and Standards Centre and the Lavrio Power Plant of PPC, and d) the smart home of CERTH. 

During each demonstration, the end-users performed cyberattacks against the industrial devices used in each pilot, and the SPEAR platform successfully detected these attacks and visualised the relevant security events. Finalising the SPEAR deployments in pilots, the final evaluation and user acceptance testing will follow in the next months.

The kick-off meeting of the EU-funded H2020 project #EVIDENT was held virtually on 15-16 December, 2020. 9 project partners from 5 countries will investigate the socio-economic non-energy impacts and behavioral insights on energy efficiency interventions.

On Thursday 05/11/2020, the first online meeting of the Erasmus+ project SmartROOT: Smart faRming innOvatiOn Training was held. The project is implemented in the framework of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships.

The SmartROOT project, which is coordinated by the Associate Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Western Macedonia Sarigiannidis Panagiotis, includes 7 partners. The SmartROOT project partners are comprised of 3 Universities (University of Western Macedonia – Greece, International Hellenic University – Greece and Sveriges LnatbruksUniversitet – Sweden) and 4 companies (Sidroco Holdings Limited – Cyprus, Federacion Espanola de Indurrtias de la Alimentacion y Bebidas – Spain, INFALIA Private Company – Greece and AGRIVI doo za Proizvodnju, Trgovinu Iusluge – Croatia).