Demands to secure private data grow infinitely more complex every year.
While threats grow so do the regulatory and ethical requirements on businesses, even as governments themselves struggle with the basics of cyber security themselves.
“Governments, companies, and the public are coming to the European cyber security industry with questions about how to make security both effective and practical for their needs, and CANVAS is going to help us get answers to the people that need them,” explains F-Secure security advisor Sean Sullivan.
The CANVAS Consortium — Constructing an Alliance for Value-driven Cybersecurity — has been chosen by the European Commission “to unify technology developers with legal and ethical scholar and social scientists to approach the challenge how cybersecurity can be aligned with European values and fundamental rights.”
As “the leading European ICT Security company,” F-Secure will provide CANVAS with expert opinions from the cyber security industry, and share insights the group generates with other industry leaders throughout the continent.
The 11 founding members of the group gathered in Zurich for the first time in mid-September and within three years, it hopes to “bring together stakeholders from key areas of the European Digital Agenda – the health system, business/finance, and law enforcement/national security – for discussing challenges and solutions when aligning cybersecurity with ethics.”
F-Secure’s nearly thirty-year tradition of balancing security with the demands of a connecting world gives it a unique position to add decades of practice to impressive collection of researchers and theoreticians.
Sullivan pointed to end-to-end encryption as an example of “the sort of technology that deserves better educational efforts to dispel any common misunderstandings, as they might exist, among policy makers.”
This effort part of a flurry of new cyber security initiatives in Europe that combine public and private resources in an effort to improve cyber security in an effort to increase the competitiveness of European tech companies.
“Cyber security is becoming more important as people and societies are relying more on digital infrastructure than ever before,” said Dr. Markus Christen of the University of Zurich, Senior Research Fellow and CANVAS project coordinator. “But at the same time, it’s important that we avoid burning the village in order to save it.”
The goal is to find the sweet spot between inspired innovation and considered caution that will make Europe a tech leader for the next decade and beyond. And F-Secure’s ability to secure the present while seeing what’s coming next will play a crucial role in that process.
“Doing nothing is not an option given the capabilities of today’s attackers,” says Sullivan. “But at the same time, being too heavy handed harms innocent people and companies looking to make the most out of new technology.”
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