ICT for Societal Challenges - European Commission - Europa

incentives aiming at making the EU’s online environment the most secure in
the world. The European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) has been created to fight
against cybercrime, contributing to faster reactions in the event of online
crimes. As network and information systems are globally interconnected,
cybersecurity has a global dimension too. The strategy addresses international
cooperation as a key priority.
• trust in technology – 74% of EU Internet users in 2012 thought that the risk
of becoming a victim of cybercrime had increased in the past year. Building
citizens’ confidence in the digital world needs an EU-wide solution – also
because cyber attackers do not respect national borders. A disruption in one
EU country can have a knock-on effect in other Member States or the EU as
a whole. That is why the European Commission proposed the Directive on
Network and Information Security, which aim is to strengthen preparedness,
cross-border cooperation and information exchange in the EU.
• safety of children online – whereas the Digital Agenda for Europe aims to
have every European digital, children, who start using Internet from the age
of 7, need quality content online to stimulate their imagination and help them
learn. But they also need the skills and tools for using the Internet safely and
responsibly. A combination of policies is required to deliver a Better Internet
for Children. The “Strategy for a Better Internet for Children” proposes a
series of actions to be undertaken by the Commission, Member States and the
whole industry value chain.
To meet those objectives and to keep our society secure and provide citizens with
the trust in ICT services and devices, on the one hand we need a definition of legal
frameworks (like proposed cybersecurity strategy and directive) to protect us from
any disruption of, or attack on, our services and devices. On the other hand, we
need to invest in research and development of secure, trustworthy and privacy
protecting ICT. At the moment, funding in the field is available through 7 th Framework
Programme and Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP)
and in the future, for years 2014-2020, funding will be available through the new EU
framework programme for research and innovation, Horizon 2020.
Online privacy and electronic identity
While using the Internet you often entrust vital personal
information, such as your name, address, and credit
card number, to your Internet Service Provider and to
the website. As securing these transactions requires
strong authentication, electronic authentication
tokens and mechanisms have become common.
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