ShieldHealthAdria launches to reinforce hospital cybersecurity in Slovenia and Croatia

Ljubljana, 16 June 2026. ShieldHealthAdria, a new project co-funded by the European Union under the Digital Europe Programme's CyberHEALTH action, has officially launched. Over the next 24 months the consortium will strengthen the cybersecurity readiness and resilience of public hospitals in Slovenia and Croatia — and turn the experience into a tested, NIS2-aligned model that healthcare providers across Europe can replicate.

Healthcare is one of Europe's most targeted sectors. Since the pandemic, hospitals have faced relentless ransomware, phishing and data-breach campaigns, while telemedicine, remote diagnostics and connected medical devices have widened the attack surface. Many institutions still lack dedicated security teams, structured response plans and regular staff training.

ShieldHealthAdria answers with a complete framework: technical, organisational and regulatory assessments across a representative cluster of hospitals; validated pilot deployments in 11 hospitals — 5 in Slovenia and 6 in Croatia — spanning tertiary, regional, municipal, paediatric, oncological and psychiatric care; training for over 1,000 healthcare professionals; and a replication toolkit for the whole EU.

The work follows four pillars: prevent (baseline maturity and compliance assessments aligned with NIS2, GDPR and national legislation), detect (endpoint monitoring, network detection and early breach detection validated in live hospital environments), respond & recover (structured incident-response procedures, simulations and continuous monitoring), and sustain & scale (a trained workforce, governance dashboards and a replication toolkit for healthcare providers across Europe).

The consortium pairs two leading EU-based cybersecurity providers — Telekom Slovenije, as coordinator and lead technical partner, and Combis, as technology and implementation partner — with 11 public hospitals and key policy stakeholders. The project, funded under Grant Agreement No. 101299590, is supported by the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre.