This deliverable establishes the internal governance and quality framework for the FREE6G-Security project, defining shared rules for CTTC and the subcontracted partner to ensure high-quality outcomes and serving as a live document updated twice during the project. It outlines project roles, responsibilities, and contacts; describes internal communication tools, shared resources, and file-naming conventions; and defines quality assurance and control methods for key outputs such as deliverables and publications. It also classifies existing and project-generated research data, mapping them into a structured database, and summarizes dissemination activities alongside data management, archiving, preservation, and IPR procedures. In addition, it details compliance measures with GDPR and presents a consolidated risk analysis, including affected work packages, impact levels, and mitigation actions.

This deliverable additionally provides updated definitions of management roles and responsibilities, a detailed description of project resources including the shared collaboration space, and a substantially expanded Data Management Plan. The DMP now includes a structured inventory of all data types handled in the project, clear assignment of responsibilities for coordination, data ownership, access control, and technical support, and a comprehensive application of FAIR principles. It further details data security policies, organizational and technical controls, incident response, secure deletion, long-term preservation, and ethical and legal considerations. In addition, the deliverable formalizes quality control and quality assurance procedures not only for deliverables but also for publications, dissemination, and demonstration materials, and concludes with an updated risk analysis outlining identified risks and corresponding mitigation actions.

In addition to the elements already covered in earlier summaries, this deliverable reports significant updates related to project execution and societal impact. It documents delays across several technical activities, explains their technical causes, and formally justifies a six-month project extension, including updated planning for activities, deliverables, and milestones, while confirming that objectives, scope, and budget remain unchanged. It also provides a detailed assessment of the implementation and impact of the Gender Equality Plan, highlighting concrete achievements, monitoring indicators, and next steps aligned with Horizon Europe principles. Furthermore, it evaluates the Employment Plan, detailing measures taken to attract young talent, support STEM education, foster innovation, develop future skills, and stimulate direct and indirect employment. Finally, it updates the project risk analysis, identifying delays and architectural complexity as key risks, and confirms that mitigation actions and the approved extension have kept the project on track toward its objectives.

This deliverable presents a milestone for the FREE6G-Security project, which focuses on providing policy-based security, privacy, and trust for multi-tenant 6G infrastructures. The project leverages blockchain and smart contracts to enable decentralized collaboration between untrusted tenants while protecting sensitive user and operational data. Additionally, machine learning-assisted threat detection and analysis is integrated to identify and respond to security threats in real time. The document defines key use cases, illustrating how security solutions operate across the network slice lifecycle, including unauthorized access detection and continuous monitoring. It details the functional architecture, including modules like the Network Slice Orchestrator, Blockchain, SDAN, TTS, SPM, and DAE. Requirements, functional specifications, and KPIs are consolidated to guide system design and implementation. The document also emphasizes applied knowledge creation, intellectual property, and scientific dissemination. Overall, FREE6G-Security demonstrates a secure, decentralized, and intelligent approach to managing multi-tenant 6G networks. This milestone provides a foundation for the next steps in architecture development and deployment.

This report presents the preliminary activities of the workpackage focused on distributed learning systems, with particular attention to enhancing security and trust. The deliverable provides a state-of-the-art review of federated learning (FL) as a leading approach for training machine learning models over distributed data sources. It introduces blockchain technology as a method to ensure trust among federated clients and examines the interplay between FL and blockchain, highlighting both the benefits and limitations of integrating the two. The document includes a gap analysis, identifying open issues such as latency and communication overhead introduced by blockchain in FL environments. Potential research directions are also outlined, including the development of intelligent distributed clients capable of detecting adversarial attacks and implementing countermeasures. Overall, the deliverable establishes a foundation for evaluating blockchain-enabled federated learning, providing insights into its security implications and guiding further research within the workpackage.

This deliverable presents the initial design of a blockchain-based decentralized federated learning (FL) scheme aimed at ensuring security, privacy, and transparency in multi-party learning scenarios. The proposed system uses homomorphic encryption to protect both the training data and local models, while zero-knowledge proofs (specifically zkSNARKs) are applied to verify the correct contributions of different agents. Transparency and coordination are achieved through a smart contract deployed on a public blockchain, such as Ethereum. The document details the federated learning scheme, including the participating entities and learning process, as well as the key management system, highlighting the encryption algorithm and its advantages. It also describes the mechanism for protecting computational integrity using zero-knowledge proofs. The conclusions summarize the contributions of the design, emphasizing that homomorphic encryption, key aggregation, and zero-knowledge proofs together guarantee data confidentiality, model security, and proper agent participation.

This deliverable reports the final results and activities of the workpackage focused on enhancing security and trust in distributed learning systems. It presents a framework designed for detecting misbehavior in untrusted environments, using deep reinforcement learning (DRL) combined with transfer learning. The study focuses on an automotive use case involving autonomous driving, where vehicles may perform different types of attacks. The framework enables distributed clients to recognize adversarial attacks and trigger appropriate countermeasures, relying only on trusted sources. The approach supports selective knowledge transfer among Roadside Units (RSUs) to detect previously unseen and partially observable misbehaviors. Performance evaluation shows that this method is sample-efficient, effective, and improves generalizability while avoiding energy-intensive tools like blockchain. The deliverable demonstrates that introducing intelligence into distributed clients can enhance security with minimal computational and communication overhead, providing an efficient and practical solution for secure distributed learning in vehicular networks.

This deliverable presents the final report on a decentralized federated learning (FL) architecture based on blockchain, designed to ensure data integrity, privacy, and security in multi-tenant infrastructures. The system employs homomorphic encryption and zkSNARKs to protect training data and local models while verifying contributions from participants, with coordination and transparency, including incentives, managed via smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. A proof-of-concept demonstrates practical feasibility, showing that zkSNARK circuits and keys are manageable on standard hardware. The architecture addresses both model and data poisoning attacks, ensuring secure training even with untrusted local data sources, and evaluates property inference attacks, highlighting that attacks are more effective in early training stages and when target properties are rare. The study emphasizes the interplay between model training dynamics, data characteristics, and privacy vulnerabilities in FL systems, validating that high security and privacy can be achieved while maintaining practical performance.

The integration of advanced technologies such as Blockchain, Networking, and NextOSS is crucial for organizations to improve their performance and data security in an increasingly complex and digitally oriented environment. To this end, the deliverable aimed to provide a step-by-step approach on how to install and configure these tools, thus facilitating the development of an adequate and efficient working environment.Thanks to the requested extension, any deviations that arose during the course of the project were corrected by the end of the project. In addition, the proposed general testing plan was essential in determining the suitability of the NextOSS, Networking, and Blockchain modules, ensuring that they function correctly both individually and together, and verifying the accuracy of the information being handled.

This deliverable provides a comprehensive integration and testing report for the FREE6G system, combining NextGen OSS, 5G network modules, and Blockchain technology. It details step-by-step procedures for installation, configuration, and modular deployment, ensuring each component operates optimally and can interconnect without failures. The report includes use-case-based implementation scenarios covering user registration, data querying, network slicing, and unauthorized change detection. A structured test plan validates each module individually and in combination, ensuring data integrity, system reliability, and readiness for real-world deployment. The document also demonstrates practical showcases of the integrated system and outlines future work, emphasizing the system’s ability to improve organizational efficiency, data security, and operational readiness. Overall, it serves as a technical blueprint for exploiting these technologies in real-life business and research scenarios.

In this deliverable, the project documents all dissemination and communication efforts conducted during the first half of FREE6G-Security. Activities targeted both technical and non-technical audiences to share project progress and results. A dedicated project website was created to provide accessible information and enable direct contact with the FREE6G teams, while social media channels, such as LinkedIn, were used to broaden outreach. Scientific dissemination included publications in journals, presentations at international conferences and workshops, invited talks, and supervision of Master’s and PhD theses. Other initiatives involved participation in industry events, contributions to associations, presentations in standardization groups, and organization of project-related events. The deliverable also highlights broader internationalization and impact-boosting activities aimed at raising project visibility. These coordinated efforts ensure that project outcomes are effectively communicated, supporting knowledge transfer, stakeholder engagement, and community building. Overall, D5.1 demonstrates a structured approach to both dissemination and communication, laying the foundation for continued visibility and impact throughout the project.

The FREE6G-Security exploitation report outlines the strategies and activities to maximize the impact of the project’s innovations in 6G security, privacy, and trust solutions for multi-tenant networks. It details internal NTT dissemination to ensure stakeholders are informed and engaged with project developments, alongside social media presence to enhance visibility and industry recognition. The report covers engagement with strategic clients through meetings, presentations, and pilot tests to tailor solutions to real-world needs and foster adoption. It also highlights participation in exhibitions and conferences, notably Mobile World Congress 2025, as a platform to demonstrate practical applications and leadership in next-generation network security. Additionally, the report addresses the development and integration of source code prototypes for rapid Proof-of-Concept deployments, ensuring solutions are validated under realistic conditions. Intellectual property management is a key focus, evaluating patentability and protecting valuable innovations to create competitive advantages. Overall, the deliverable provides a comprehensive view of how the project’s outputs are being exploited for commercial, research, and industrial impact, ensuring adoption, visibility, and sustainable development of the technologies.

In this deliverable, the FREE6G-Security project reports on dissemination and communication activities conducted during the second half of the project. Efforts focused on engaging both technical and non-technical audiences, ensuring broad visibility of the project’s objectives, outcomes, and societal impact. The project website was regularly updated, complemented by active outreach via professional social media channels to promote results and facilitate interaction with diverse stakeholders. Scientific dissemination included publications in international journals, conference presentations, invited talks, white and position papers, and academic contributions such as theses. Industry engagement was intensified through participation in major events, exhibitions, and workshops, strengthening liaisons with European players and promoting technology transfer. Contributions to standardization bodies and industry associations helped position the project’s innovations in the broader 6G ecosystem. Educational and public outreach initiatives targeted students and the general public, raising awareness of the societal benefits of 6G technologies. Overall, the deliverable highlights the strategic coordination of dissemination under WP5, emphasizing collaboration, internationalization, and impact maximization. The activities ensured that project outcomes reached relevant stakeholders, supporting both immediate and long-term visibility and uptake of FREE6G-Security innovations.