Community

Completing the same information over and over again in questionnaires and project applications is a familiar frustration across education and research institutions. With EXPATS (Explainable Autofill for Trustworthy Surveys), PXL University of Applied Sciences and Arts has developed an AI-powered tool that significantly simplifies this process. Thanks to funding from the GÉANT Innovation Programme, the project has evolved from an idea into a fully functional prototype.

For several years now, Belnet has been supporting the annual information security awareness campaign of the pan-European research network GÉANT. The 'human factor' is in fact a crucial element in the fight against security incidents. It is no different for research and educational institutions.

From 1 January 2022, Belnet will take over the management of DMPonline.be from the DMPbelgium Consortium. This tool allows researchers to draw up, manage and share digital data management plans. Some twenty universities, colleges and research centres already use DMPonline.be.

Last month, Belnet was appointed as the mandated organisation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Association for Belgium. The aim of EOSC is to create a new European web of data as a means of stimulating interdisciplinary research and thereby boosting science and the economy. Belnet's role within this ambitious project will be a coordinating and operational one.

In 2020, there is no need to doubt the threat posed by phishing. We could spend so much time trying to size the risk that phishing poses to our society, our organisations. I am not even sure I could give you an accurate estimation of this risk. There is so much unknown. However, for many of us, being targeted by cyber-attacks using phishing is now part of our typical day, or, at least, a typical week.

The month of October is traditionally dedicated to cyber security. We would like to draw your attention to 2 interesting initiatives: the European research and education network GÉANT is launching a campaign to raise cyber security awareness within its community and the national awareness campaign will be focusing on two-factor authentication this year.

During this corona crisis, Belnet is doing everything it can to respond to the changing requirements of the organisations connected to us. To this end we have recently made a number of emergency changes to increase the capacity of certain clients.

From 16 to 20 June, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, hosted TNC, the conference organised by GÉANT, which brings together the national research networks in Europe and other continents.