Industrial alliance lifts cyber security to the political level
Initiated by Siemens AG, the group includes NXP, IBM, Airbus and international testing and verification company SGS as well as Deutsche Telekom, carmaker Daimler AG and insurer Allianz. In a joint “Charter of Trust”, thee group calls for action at the political and the technological level to ensure cyber security amidst an increasingly entangled and connected digital economy.
Without data and cyber security, there would be no trustworthy digital factories, no secure energy infrastructures, no safe autonomous vehicle and no intelligent networking of robot-controlled systems, Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser said at the presentation of the paper.
The Charter identifies ten fields of action for cyber security in which policymakers and companies alike must become more active. For example, the document calls for responsibility for cyber security to be anchored at the highest levels of government and business, and for a separate ministry and Chief Information Security Officer to be established there. In addition, mandatory, independent certification by third parties for critical infrastructures on the Internet of Things is to be established – especially where dangerous situations can arise: for example, in autonomous driving or for robots in production that will work directly with humans in the future.
In the future, security and data protection functions will be preconfigured in technologies and cyber-security rules will be part of free trade agreements. The signatories of the Charter also expect more impetus in training and international initiatives to promote cyber security.According to the ENISA Threat Landscape Report, threats to cyber security caused worldwide damage of more than 560 billion euros in 2016 alone. For some European countries, the damage amounts to as high as 1.6 percent of gross domestic product. According to market researcher Gartner, 8.4 billion networked devices were in use in 2017 – 31 percent more than in 2016, and by 2020 it is expected to reach 20.4 billion.
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