Cybersecurity Research Landscape in Switzerland

Management Summary

The Swiss National Cyberstrategy (NCS) considers cybersecurity research as a crucial pillar to strengthen Switzerland’s ability to protect itself against cyberthreats. In addition, cybersecurity research is expected to contribute directly to Switzerland’s economic success and leverage Switzerland’s position as a neutral country with a high education standard and strong innovation system to drive the development of cybersecurity services and products.

Despite the national importance of cybersecurity research, the actual landscape is not well understood. As Swiss universities and research organisations operate quite autonomously and are mostly free to set their own research priorities, the overall size and the focus areas of the Swiss
cybersecurity research ecosystem are hard to assess at the national level.

To this end, we performed a quantitative study assessing the working power invested by universities in different cybersecurity research topics. In total, we surveyed 22 Swiss universities and analysed their research efforts in 14 research domains defined by a taxonomy of the European Joint Research Center.

Our study reveals that the nationwide total working power assigned to cybersecurity research amounts to 297 full-time equivalents (FTEs) across all domains. However, half of the research domains receive only little attention. The five least explored domains receive only 7.2 FTEs in total while the top three domains (software and hardware security engineering, cryptology, and network and distributed systems), consume the majority of the working power (174 FTEs). With nine involved universities, network and distributed systems is the most popular domain.

Our assessment provides the first systematic and quantitative evaluation of the Swiss cybersecurity research landscape and shall serve as basis for policymakers, universities, industry, and funding agencies to address possible research imbalance, incentivise strategic areas, and detect potential blind spots in the Swiss cybersecurity research landscape.

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Source : © VBS/DDPS 2023

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