2025/18 Weekly Update from the EU ISAC for Cities & Regions: Invitation to Participate (and circulate) in ENISA’s NIS360 Sector Survey / (Almost) Daily Cyber Forecast launched on LinkedIn – Follow us / Barisa Pilot launched with high level development roadmap / I4C+ MISP set-up and NDA being finalised / Threat actors now running our defence-in-depth? / Cyber Risks – Jail or Bankrupt? / Friday call 27 June cancelled / ISAC Baseline (IBAS) Project continues – join us!
Note that the Friday sessions on 27 June is cancelled.
** For Back Issues see https://isac4cities.eu/blog **
The City ISAC (I4C+) is an Information and Analysis Centre whose members are IT and cyber security decision makers exchanging knowledge to improve their cities and collective cyber resilience. I4C+ is a Special Interest Group (SIG) hosted by Major Cities Europe (MCE). Dr. Oliver Schwabe is a member of MCE and in his function Chair of the ISAC for Cities Plus (I4C+). He is the person in charge of this effort on behalf of MCE and the responsible contact person. I4C+ is recognized by the European Agency for Cybersecurity ENISA. See https://isac4cities.eu/.
Daily Cyber Forecast
Our GPT Barista will be publishing an (almost) daily cyber forecast to our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/eu-city-information-sharing-and-analysis-center-isac/. Below an example and do follow us on LinkedIn!
[TLP: CLEAR] EU ISAC for Cities & Regions Daily Global Cybersecurity Forecast — June 19, 2025
🚨 Highlights
- CVE of the Day: CVE‑2025‑23121 (Veeam Backup & Replication, CVSS 9.9) allows authenticated RCE; patch version 12.3.1.1139 addresses it.
- Additional Alert: CVE‑2025‑33071 (Windows KDC Proxy RCE, CVSS 8.1) included in June’s Patch Tuesday.
- Patch of the Day: Multiple Microsoft and Veeam updates available; prioritize RCE patches.
- Threat Actor: Predatory Sparrow (Gonjeshke Darande) launched destructive cyberattacks—destroying $90 M in crypto and crippling Iran’s Bank Sepah.
- Regional Outlook: EU stable; MEA remains at high risk.
🛡️ Guidance: Apply Patch Tuesday updates, monitor domain‑joined backup servers, segment critical services, and enhance outbound log analysis.
Invitation to Participate (and circulate) in ENISA’s NIS360 Sector Survey
Over the past few months, our ENISA friends have been working on developing the NIS360 surveys — and they are happy to share that they are now ready to launch!
We would appreciate it if you could share the survey dedicated to public administrations with the members of ISAC4Cities.
The goal of the survey is to assess the cybersecurity maturity and criticality of sectors classified as essential or important under NIS2.
The input collected will directly inform the upcoming ENISA NIS360 Report, which will provide a comprehensive overview and comparison of sectors, highlighting where each sector stands. Through NIS360 surveys, ENISA aims to collect data on an annual basis to support companies and competent authorities in prioritising resources and strengthening cybersecurity practices over time.
You can access the survey via the following link: https://enablor.dk/auth/register/survey/8419079683a240e88266e257bf391b00?lang=en&enisa=true
We kindly invite you to complete the survey by September 15.
You can also find last year’s NIS360 report here: https://www.enisa.europa.eu/publications/enisa-nis360-2024. However, this year, we aim to gather input from a broader range of entities in order to develop the most accurate and comprehensive picture of the sector possible.
If you have any questions, need further information, or are interested in continuing the dialogue and contributing your expertise to support our work, please do not hesitate to contact the ENISA team at NIS360@enisa.europa.eu <mailto:NIS360@enisa.europa.eu> .
Weekly [TLP:RED]
Please contact us directly for more information – these are summaries only and the “key” is in the actual stories shared privately. The stories are based on personal sensitive knowledge shared by peers in personal conversations under Chatham House Rules. This “stuff” may look obvious (?) – the magic lies between the lines and only becomes visible in a personal conversation. Full list at https://isac4cities.eu/tlpred.
This week´s thoughts are based on the scope of essential services your public administration subscribes to, operates, and manages, including what IT systems support their delivery.
- Weekly [TLP:RED] for Publicly Elected Officials (Repeat # 30): When peers present high-profile projects – ask their senior technical staff for the “true” story, i.e., actual scope, limitations etc.
- Weekly [TLP:RED] for Essential Services Managers (Repeat # 30): Only trial software installed in your network.
- Weekly [TLP:RED] for IT Leaders (Repeat # 30): Meet the customers of your vendors and listen to their experiences.
Ask Barista (GPT)
We have now launched a Barista pilot where colleagues get access to a custom designed ChatGPT app called “Barista” – I asked Barista who it is and it replied: “I’m Barista, your cybersecurity analyst assistant. I’m here to help security operations centre (SOC) teams, blue team defenders, and incident responders with things like: Log analysis (from Splunk, Sentinel, ELK, etc.), Writing detection rules (Sigma, KQL, SPL), Mapping alerts to MITRE ATT&CK, Remediation guidance (NIST, CIS, OWASP best practices), Threat hunting, system hardening, and incident response support, Automating security processes in hybrid and cloud environments”.
Several administrations have already joined. Please contact me if you are also interested in a pilot account and joining the conversation. MCE is funding the ChatGPT single user account for the moment and the next step will be to find a sponsor for the Zapier integration and GoogleDrive account so that we can begin with creating a library of data to feed Barista and kick-off some test workflow integration. Below a high-level conceptual draft of the process we are looking to explore.
If you would like access to the pilot individual version, please let me know.
If you would like us to operate a query process for you (i.e., with internal data from your side) please do reach out.
I4C+ MISP
One colleague now has our MISP running in their own network and we are working on pulling together the many:many NDA needed to begin using it – more once that NDA is finalised. Each administration can get its own confidential area and there is then the opportunity to share with other administrations and publish to the ENISA MISP.
Summary
Hi everyone, summertime and after (another) a short 2-week break, friends from Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Ireland and Italy joined and we spent most of the time, sharing holiday notes – one colleague joining from their holiday location (but had to leave because the family complained…. 😊)
Besides sharing notes on the developments of Barista and our MISP, we learned that in one country organised crime seems to be investing in IT service providers – shock-effect for us since this trend may mean that the threat-actors are beginning to run our defence-in-depth frameworks…. Perhaps we need to extend our (potentially) existing vendor compliance checks with reviews of their investors? This has some deep implications for us all.
Considering the NIS2 focus on risk management, one colleague then shared that in their organisation senior leadership is only asking two questions regarding (cyber) risk which are (1) which ones could put me in jail for not dealing with them, and (2) which ones could bankrupt the organization? Something to reflect on – some powerful priorisation filters!
Cheers,
Oliver
| In the News |
- Major Cities of Europe, in collaboration with the City of Issy-les-Moulineaux, is pleased to announce the joint 2025 conference under the theme of “Piloting Disruptive Innovation in Cities and Regions”, which will be hosted at the UGC Congress Centre from October 9 to 10. Integrated into the Greater Paris Metropolis, Issy-les-Moulineaux is one of the most innovative cities in France and has long been recognized as a leader in digital innovation, circular economy, and environmental footprint reduction. The event is co-organized with Issy Media, the public company responsible for communication and innovation in Issy-les-Moulineaux. The conference will be conducted in English and French, with simultaneous translation available. See www.majorcities.eu for more details.
| ISAC Services (Member Funded) |
We have published our services at Services Offered – EU ISAC for Cities (isac4cities.eu). Please do review and consider reaching out to include such in your activities and budgets.
Note that emerging new services are related to managing the MISP platform (and onboarding) plus Barista.
| ISAC Baseline (IBAS) Project |
The IBAS project continues and remember this sits on the Enablor platform serving a wider community. Enablor is currently supporting 3931 organisations with 4158 users and 10978 logins last year – a thriving community!
The ISAC benchmark platform offers a unique opportunity for public administrations to benchmark themselves against not only regulative requirements but also other local governments around Europe. Benchmarking data from European municipalities are now available in the ISAC Baseline Program providing participants with insight into how similar organizations perform and comply with legislation. Assessing the organization’s security level gives insight data on compliance with both legislation as well as automated mappings to security frameworks such as ISO 27001-2, CIS 18 and NIST CSF. The enablor platform can be used within your own organization and is a shortcut to collaborating with similar European organizations. If you are a region, you can also “sponsor” membership for your cities to create regional bench-learning groups. If you are a nation, then you can sponsor membership for your regions and cities as well of course.
Key value proposition? In the many discussions leading up to the launch, we see that the key value of participating is (a) access to a massive amount of detailed “real stories” on successful implementations across the NIS2 spectrum, and (b) significantly reduced efforts for reporting. If needed, we can also provide administrative support for transferring existing data into the enablor platform.
Please remember you can reach the whole group via city-isac-i4c-tlpwhite@majorcities.eu. A dedicated group for those cities signing the NDAs is available separately.
Also note our LinkedIn organisational page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/eu-city-information-sharing-and-analysis-center-isac/ and our discussion group at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12773643/. Do follow us / join.
Join our weekly Friday morning coffee chats from 9am-10am CET – feel free to come in your pyjamas. Let me know if you are missing an invite and I will send.
Thank you for the support, your City ISAC I4C+ Team.
Cheers and ever onwards
Oliver
Innovating our Future… Together
Chair City ISAC I4C+ / Dr. Oliver Schwabe.
Email: oliver.schwabe@isac4cities.eu Mobile: +49 (0) 1709053671. Web: https://i4c.isacs.eu/ & https://www.majorcities.eu/isac-for-cities-plus/