ARMOR: assessing the security risks of IoT systems with CETIC

The ARMOR team from Get Your Way and CETIC at the Strike-IT 2026 kickoff in Charleroi

Get Your Way is launching a new research project called ARMOR, in partnership with CETIC, the Walloon applied research center based in Charleroi. The goal is to build an agentic tool that analyzes the security risks of connected systems, and to make cyber resilience something every organization can actually afford.

Connected devices are everywhere, including in our own products. They make systems smarter, but every new device is also a new door an attacker can try to open. Securing them today usually means expensive audits and scarce specialists. ARMOR is our attempt to change that: a tool that is cheap, easy to use, and genuinely helpful for the teams who have to keep these systems safe.

What ARMOR is about

The idea behind ARMOR is to create a bridge between knowledge and application. Security research produces an enormous body of expertise on vulnerabilities, attack patterns and best practices, but that knowledge is hard to put into practice for a small team without a dedicated security department.

ARMOR uses an agentic approach: instead of a static checklist, the tool reasons about a given system, maps where the risks are, and guides the user toward concrete improvements. The ambition is to lower the barrier so dramatically that running a meaningful security risk assessment becomes a routine step, not a once-a-year project.

In this consortium, the roles are complementary:

• CETIC brings the research depth: the methodology, the security knowledge and the scientific rigor.
• Get Your Way brings the industrial application and real-world feedback: we put the tool to work on actual connected systems and tell the research center what works, what breaks, and what is missing.

That feedback loop is the whole point. A tool that only exists in a lab helps no one. By grounding the research in a real industrial use case, we help build something that teams can pick up and use on day one.

The Strike-IT 2026 program

ARMOR is part of Strike-IT 2026, a program guided by the Royal Higher Institute for Defence, in partnership with the Belgian Cyber Force, formerly the Cyber Command. The program funds fast, agile projects that strengthen the cybersecurity of connected objects, in both civil and military contexts.

The project is hosted at A6K in Charleroi, one of the two Cyber Defence Factories set up for the program. These factories are open hubs, located outside military compounds, designed precisely to make public-private collaboration possible. Each selected project runs for six months and aims for a near-operational maturity, with a final demonstration day in December.

ARMOR was selected alongside other Belgian consortia working on connected-system security, from network anomaly detection to secure firmware updates and drone-swarm protection.

Why work with CyberDefence

Our use case is civil. We are not building a weapon, and ARMOR is not a military application. So why work hand in hand with the people who defend the country against cyberattacks?

Because they are, quite simply, among the best at it. The teams behind Belgian Cyber Defence have built deep expertise in protecting critical infrastructure against real, persistent threats, and there is no reason the civil world should not benefit from that experience. Working alongside them lets us learn from the people who face the hardest version of the problem every day.

And the benefit runs both ways. Improving cybersecurity broadly, and above all in civil applications, frees up critical resources. Every system that becomes harder to attack on its own is one less thing defenders have to worry about, which means they can concentrate their scarce, highly specialized people where they are needed most. Attackers never stop. If a tool like ARMOR can help raise the baseline everywhere, then helping is exactly what we should do. That is why the program and the tool are ultimately meant to be used by Cyber Defence as well.

What comes next

Antoine Malherbe presenting the Get Your Way industrial use case at the ARMOR kickoff

The CETIC research team discussing the ARMOR methodology at the kickoff

Over the next six months, we will iterate quickly: CETIC building and refining the agentic engine, Get Your Way testing it against real connected systems and feeding back what we learn. The aim is a tool that is mature enough to be useful well beyond the lab, and affordable enough that improving your cyber resilience is no longer a question of budget. We are proud to contribute to a stronger, more resilient cyber ecosystem in Belgium.

Links

• Royal Higher Institute for Defence: Strike-IT 2026: a new boost for cyber innovation, in partnership with the Cyber Force
• Royal Higher Institute for Defence: The Strike-IT call
• A6K: Strike-IT 2026: from selection to action