A Business Information Security
Survey commissioned in 2000 by the National Computing Centre
in the UK, showed that just one in five companies were trading
on-line. The survey revealed that the vast majority of British
businesses still remained to be convinced that the benefits of
on-line trading outweighed potential risks. These risks include
insecure payment systems and Internet fraud and viruses. The
concerns expressed were so great that two thirds of those companies
that were not trading on-line had no plans to do so in the next
two years.
The European Commission is
well aware of these concerns and is addressing security as part
of the IST Programme's Key Action II, New Methods of Work and
Electronic Commerce. The focus of the work being supported by
the Programme is on information and network security and other
confidence building technologies. The proposed work is driven
by the need to build trust in order to stimulate the development
of eWork and eCommerce and to create user confidence in information
and communication systems and networks.
Work is currently being supported
in two area: (1) trust in information infrastructures and (2)
enhancing security in electronic transactions. The objective
of the first area of work is to enhance trust in information
infrastructures to support eWork and eCommerce and other related
services. The objectives underlying the area concerned with enhancing
security in electronic transactions is to build trust in the
use of information infrastructures by securing electronic transactions
and content, and by enhancing privacy.
Security related research and
development work supported by Key Action II is being presented
at the e-2001 conference, which is to be held in Venice, October
17-19.
e-2001 is the conference for
RTD projects in Key Action II of the IST Programme, who are also
the primary sponsors of e-2001. Major sponsors are Telecom Italia,
Canon and InfoCamere.
Ends
Notes to Editors
The following are a selection
of papers relevant security and trust that are being presented
at the e-2001 conference.
Architecture and Security Aspect
of a Signature Server
Bruno Crispo, Cryptomathic Italia, Italy
The Digital Signature And Its Enemies
Fiorella Bonizzi, InfoCamere, Italy
Development of the Secure MultiMediaCard with WIM function
Takashi Tsunehiro, Hitachi, Japan
SEVA: a framework to dynamically set up and run secure extranet
Pierre VANNEL, GEMPLUS Labs, France
A monitoring/auditing mechanism for SSL/TLS secure connections
Christoforos Kavvadias, National Technical University of Athens,
Greece
Security Policy Adaptation Reinforced Through Agents
Aljosa Pasic, Sema Group, Spain |