A European funded project aimed at strengthening cybersecurity preparedness and resilience in the energy sector in the Nordic Region by facilitating specialized services deployment in security testing, threat assessment, risk assessment, and risk monitoring.  

The overarching goal of the project is to enhance preparedness within the energy sector for Nordic countries and facilitate efficient incident response through collaborative approaches. The project seeks to make a substantial contribution to the collective cyber resilience of the Nordic region and Europe while nurturing cross-border cooperation and mutual support. 

CRESCENDO is a Nordic project and collaboration between partners from Norway, Finland, and Denmark: 

• Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) 

• The Research Council of Norway (RCN)/NCC-NO* 

• The Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM)/NCC-NO* 

• Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (TRAFICOM)/NCC-FI* 

• The Danish Energy Agency (DEA) 

*Partners RCN, NSM and TRAFICOM represent and constitute the National Coordination Centers (NCCs) for research and innovation on cybersecurity in Norway and Finland respectively. 

The energy sector is of critical importance for national security in the Nordic countries  

As the energy sector has become increasingly digitalized and interconnected, the risk of cyber threats and attacks has grown significantly. Ensuring strong cybersecurity in the energy sector is essential for many reasons, among them are protecting critical infrastructure, preventing operational disruptions, meeting regulatory and compliance standards, and ensuring national security and resilience. 

The CRESCENDO project will fund and orchestrate the deployment of cybersecurity services at entities (public or private) in the Nordic energy sector, specifically: 

Small and medium sized businesses working with (or offer services related to) electric power generation, transmission and distribution of electricity, with innovation projects within one of the following categories: 

1. Security testing – core components IT/OT 
2. Risk assessment – for deployed systems, emerging threats assessment (for systems and threats) 
3. Real-time risk monitoring – evolving threat landscape require continuous monitoring  

The criteria for reciving innovation support will be specified in more detail when the call for proposals open in August 2025, but generally the criteria to recieve funding from CRESCENDO will be broadly defined. 

There are few, but some “minimum” criteria to be funded by CRESCENDO: 

1) Project length: The project should be short term, with a maximum length of 6 months  

2) Number of partners: The project should have minimum 2 partners, working together 

3) Demonstrated own cost: Each project must cover 50 % of their total project’s total cost.  

For example: if you receive 100.000 Euro from CRESCENDO, you will have to demonstrate that you also are spending 100.000 Euro in “own cost” on the project, whether that is in personnel costs or otherwise, which makes the total size of your project 200.000 Euro.  

4: Maximum project size: 200.000 is also the maximum cost of projects that will receive funding from CRESCENDO.  

Project size:  

The CRESCENDO project has a total of 4 million euro in available funding, that we will distribute to approximately 40 cybersecurity innovation projects, in two rounds: 10 projects will be accepted for funding in 2025, and 30 projects will be accepted for funding in 2027.  

The first call for proposals and application process is expected to be published August. The call will be open for applications from October-November 2025.

The exact content and scope of the first round, will be published on the website in the spring of 2025. Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest news. 

The specific requirements for the call for proposals will be published on the website as well as communicated through our newsletter at a later stage. 

The purpose of the CRESCENDO funding opportunity is to ensure funding for innovative, collaborative projects that will have a long time impact, beyond the project’s lifetime. 

The benifiaries of the CRESCENDO project are cybersecurity service providers such as SMEs or research organizations and energy domain entities. There will be 2 calls for proposals throughout the project's duration, funding projects that will implement cybersecurity services for energy-related systems.