The EU’s ‘cyber security’ Agency ENISA- The European Network and Information Security Agency - has launched a new report concluding that the EU should focus its future IT security research on five areas. This points out the direction for future Framework Programme (http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/understand_en.html) calls to make the EU economy flourish.

The past decade has seen a revolution in the way we communicate. An increasing number of services are available online. Consumers, service providers, governments ; they all expect online services to be available securely, at all times, in all places. This includes a perfectly functioning communications infrastructure to support the demands of the Digital Society. Moreover, the service and infrastructure components will need to actively cooperate to provide a reliable environment for increasingly complex, interdependent and mashed-up services. This report focuses on the subject of availability resilience, and thus the research into the technologies that improve the availability of online services, i.e. resilience of data networks, as it lays the foundation for EU2020 strategy and the Digital Agenda for Europe (http://europa.eu/press_room/press_packs/europe_2020/index_en.htm) .

The report identifies industry needs, new trends and their impact on decision-makers and research institutes to the most relevant research areas of network and information security within the next three to five years.

The five IT security research areas identified are:

-       cloud computing

-       real-time detection and diagnosis systems

-       future wireless networks

-       sensor networks

-        supply chain integrity

The Executive Director of ENISA, Dr Udo Helmbrecht, states:"This report gives the first direction of what the future IT security research priorities should be for the EU in our opinion.”

This report is also related to the study on ‘Standardisation gaps related to resilience’

(http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/res/technologies/std/), which together provides a comprehensive view on current needs for resilient technologies.

For full report:  http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/res/technologies/procent

For interviews: Ulf Bergstrom, Spokesman, ENISA, press@enisa.europa.eu, Mobile: +-30-6948-460143,

Slawek Gorniak, Security Expert, slawomir.gorniak@enisa.europa.eu, Mobile: +30-6970-015163.

www.enisa.europa.eu