How is ACTI-X strengthening cyber resilience across the European travel ecosystem?
In this article:
- ACTI-X is an EU-funded cybersecurity initiative designed to strengthen cyber threat intelligence sharing across critical sectors, with initial use cases focused on aviation and transport.
- Amadeus is contributing as a consortium partner, supporting work to connect advanced security technologies through a shared, real-time threat intelligence backbone.
- The project aims to improve detection, analysis and coordinated response to cyber threats by combining open-source technologies, AI capabilities and open standards.
- For the travel ecosystem, ACTI-X could help reduce disruption risk, improve operational resilience and support a safer, more reliable passenger experience.
Cybersecurity remains high on the political agenda, with threats continuing to grow in scale and complexity. Industries such as travel and transport are among the most at risk, facing increasing pressure to detect and respond to attacks in real time. This is a challenge we take seriously at Amadeus, with a company-wide commitment to enhancing cybersecurity across our own systems, those of our customers, and the wider industry.
One example is Amadeus’ contribution to Advanced Cyber Threat Information eXchange (ACTI-X), a cybersecurity initiative funded by the European Union.
As travel becomes increasingly interconnected, cybersecurity can no longer be approached solely at the level of individual organizations. An incident affecting an airport, airline, aircraft manufacturer or technology provider can create ripple effects across the wider travel ecosystem. Strengthening industry-wide visibility, threat intelligence sharing and coordinated response capabilities is therefore becoming increasingly important.
What is ACTI-X?
ACTI-X aims to improve how critical infrastructure and essential services detect, understand, and respond to cyber threats by connecting advanced security technologies through a shared, real-time threat intelligence backbone. The initiative is funded under the Digital Europe Programme through the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) and brings together leading European cybersecurity organizations.
ACTI-X is intended to support the creation of an interoperable ecosystem.
It is expected to combine open-source technologies, AI capabilities, and open standards developed by multiple partners to improve cyber threat intelligence sharing across organizations.
ACTI-X is designed to be sector-agnostic, with initial use cases focused on aviation and transport and the potential to scale to other critical domains such as energy and healthcare. The consortium brings together large operational environments, innovative cybersecurity SMEs, and a European security cluster.
Travel is an increasingly interconnected ecosystem, where airports, airlines, technology providers, aircraft manufacturers and other stakeholders rely on one another to deliver seamless operations. A cyber incident affecting one organization can have consequences across the wider travel value chain, creating operational, financial and reputational impacts beyond the initially targeted entity.
Strengthening cyber threat intelligence sharing and coordinated response capabilities is therefore becoming increasingly important at industry level.
Cybersecurity continues to grow in importance
ACTI-X comes at a timely moment. The 2025 Global Incident Response Report from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, for example, highlights how cyberattacks are becoming faster and more disruptive. It found that 86% of incidents led to business disruption, 70% involved multiple attack surfaces, and in nearly one in five cases data was exfiltrated within the first hour.
Many organizations still rely on fragmented security tools that generate isolated alerts, making it difficult to understand the full scope of an incident or respond quickly. ACTI-X is working to address this challenge by enabling real-time correlation and exchange of cyber threat intelligence, allowing detections in one part of an environment to reinforce protection across the wider system.
As consortium partner, Amadeus is helping advance how cyber threats are detected, analyzed and shared across critical sectors. Together, we aim to explore the development of a robust technical approach, while fostering collaboration across the wider cybersecurity community, including security operations centers (SOCs), computer emergency response teams (CERTs), computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs), authorities, and technology providers.
How does this look on the ground?
By supporting faster detection and more coordinated responses to cyber threats, ACTI-X could help reduce operational disruptions and increase the resilience of services such as air travel. For cybersecurity teams, this could support better visibility, faster detection and decision-making, as well as reduced pressure when managing complex incidents.
Ultimately, this could contribute to a safer and more reliable travel experience for passengers.
Imagine an airport operations team facing a sudden wave of suspicious activity targeting internal systems or customer-facing services. Every minute counts, yet understanding what is happening across multiple systems can be complex and time-consuming.
ACTI-X is expected to help bring clarity by correlating signals from different sources and enriching them with AI-driven insights, giving cybersecurity teams a more complete picture of the situation. This could support faster, more confident decision-making, help reduce pressure during high-stakes incidents and contribute to smoother airport operations.
For passengers, the potential benefit is a more resilient travel experience, with reduced disruption risk and greater confidence in the digital services they rely on throughout their journey.
Plans for the coming years
Through its participation in ACTI-X, Amadeus is helping support the development of a more connected European cybersecurity ecosystem. By expanding collective cyber threat intelligence, the initiative aims to improve the ability of organizations across the travel sector to identify and respond to emerging threats.
We will be working on ACTI-X over the coming years, with use cases and architecture specifications under development. Project modules are expected to progressively integrate cyber threat intelligence and AI capabilities, supporting testing and future deployment in operational environments.
More updates will follow as the project progresses.
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