Europe leads the fight for cyber security
Yesterday
Patrick van Eecke, https://www.dlapiper.com/nl/belgium/people/v/van-eecke-patrick/
Tine Debusschere, http://www.vandijkmc.com/en/company_1.aspx
Hans Graux, http://www.timelex.eu/en/our-team/detail/hans-graux
Olivier Delos http://sealed.be
Sylvie Lacroix http://sealed.be
Riccardo Genghini https://riccardogenghini.eu
Marc Sel http://users.skynet.be/marc.sel/index-BIO.html
as core team of EIAS2 http://www.iasproject.eu/
presented in Bruxelles the draft deliverables of its consulting activity to the European Commission, in drafting the Regulation 910/2014/EU for European Electronic Trust services. http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/trust-services-and-eid.
The Room in the Commission premises of Avenue Beaulieu 25 was packed of experts, and their active, acute participation to the presentations was challenging and extremely gratifying.
My believe is the the eIDAS Regulation 910/2014/EU is a fundamental piece of legislation. Even the Economist, that is often critical of European legislation, considers the regulation a landmark legislation. The Obama administration has presented a similar law in Congress.
I believe that proper implementation of the regulation will really transform the European market for IT services (and in particular trust services) and make it the most competitive in the world. Transparency, openness, protection of individual and collective rights cannot be dismissed as red tape and bureaucracy. Cyber security is not only about firewalls and other techno gimmicks: it is mostly about the protection of the rights of all involved parties.
Still, the devil is in the details… the impementing acts may improve the legislation only if they achieve the following goals, that are expressely stated in the regulation:
– provide an efficient supervision of the security of Trust Service Providers: efficient means effective, without red tape
– foster innovation
– avoid useless barriers to acces the market of TSPs, that will keep out new players (innovation today comes mostly from startups)
– end the fragmentation of the European market into national markets, where incumbents are protected by the local supervisory practices
We had a great start, and I am proud and grateful that I had the opportunity to contribute to the drafting of the regulatory framework for the possibly richest, most innovative, diverse and competitiva electronic services market in the world.