2025/22 Weekly Update from the EU ISAC for Cities & Regions: New friends and similar challenges – we are all facing similar issues / Our (Almost) Daily Cyber Forecast on LinkedIn – Follow us / Invitation to Participate (and circulate) in ENISA’s NIS360 Sector Survey / Weekly [TLP:RED] / Planning the transition of MISP and Barista to a new network
** 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 is publishing an (almost) daily cyber forecast to our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/eu-city-information-sharing-and-analysis-center-isac/. Follow!
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 # 34): Creating a shared cyber resource base with sister cities is easier than with others.
- Weekly [TLP:RED] for Essential Services Managers (Repeat # 34): Ensure you have (and test) a “pen and paper” business continuity plan for your services.
- Weekly [TLP:RED] for IT Leaders (Repeat # 34): Perimeter security is either completely secured (Green) or not (Red).
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”.
I4C+ MISP
We are discussing moving the current I4C+ MISP ( using https://www.misp-project.org/index.html) into the test network of a member to set the stage for a Mistral AI or Robotic Process Automation (RPA) pilot. The NDA remains a headache; however we think this can be resolved if we focus on secure containers and transferring only data from CTI providers via a future partner like https://mindflow.io/. We will probably want to move Barista there as well. Many moving pieces that may finally be coming together – contact me is you would like to be involved.
Summary
Hi everyone, friends from Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Italy and (new friends from) the Netherlands joining this morning and enjoyed learning more about a further local government -> as we have seen in various countries these are the most active driver of national ISAC-like working groups. Learning from our new friends was mainly that they also have the same challenges (i.e., driving NIS2 implementation across their public administration members, and resourcing cyber skills).
Also interesting was a discussion around whether we are actually permitted to share CTI intelligence from the providers we contract with. We reflected that while sharing the full notifications (i.e., forwarding an email) probably breaches licence terms, extracting essential data (maybe an IP, manually, via AI, or via Robotic Process Automation) and sharing that without source reference is probably ok (if perhaps a little shady…). We also reminded ourselves that such CTI only has value if we correlate with our own infrastructure and manually review for actual relevance (ok – the manual review could be an AI task in the future). This will of course trigger a large volume of potentially new notifications that need to be investigated and that is where automation must have its place – creating a “master list” of potentially malicious Ips across many administrations sounds good initially, however unless we can then automate their review and addition to WAF blacklists it makes no sense to try! This is where I definitely see AI as resource augmentation and we need pilots to develop the confidence that we do not end up blocking real services (which in itself triggers a mountain of work to unblock). I asked Barista “when asking an AI to add an IP to the blacklist of a web application firewall, how can I ensure that no essential services are blocked?” and Barista suggested the below – the challenge is training the AI on the context!
“To ensure that no essential services are blocked when adding an IP to the blacklist of a Web Application Firewall (WAF), you can follow these steps:
Identify the IP: Make sure you have correctly identified the IP address that needs to be blacklisted. Verify that it is indeed a source of malicious traffic.
Check IP Reputation: Use IP reputation services to check if the IP is known for malicious activities. This can help confirm that you are not mistakenly blacklisting a legitimate IP.
Review IP Ownership: Look up the IP address to see if it belongs to a known service provider or a cloud service that might be used by legitimate services. Websites like ARIN, RIPE, or APNIC can provide information on IP ownership.
Assess Impact: Before adding the IP to the blacklist, assess the potential impact. Check if the IP is associated with any critical services or third-party integrations that your organization relies on.
Temporary Block: Initially, add the IP to the blacklist on a temporary basis. Monitor the effects to ensure that no essential services are disrupted.
Monitor Logs: After adding the IP to the blacklist, closely monitor the WAF logs and network traffic to detect any unintended consequences or disruptions to services.
Whitelisting: If you discover that the IP is necessary for certain services, consider whitelisting specific paths or services associated with that IP instead of a complete blacklist.
Regular Review: Regularly review and update your blacklist. IPs that were once malicious may change ownership or behavior, so periodic reviews are essential.
Automated Tools: Use automated tools and scripts to help manage and update blacklists. These tools can often provide more dynamic and accurate management of IP addresses.
Documentation: Keep thorough documentation of why an IP was blacklisted, who authorized it, and any observed impacts. This can help with troubleshooting and future decision-making.
By following these steps, you can minimize the risk of blocking essential services while effectively managing your WAF blacklist.”
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/