International Co-operation in Trustworthy,
Secure and Dependable ICT infrastructures

The ICT 2010 event is fast approaching. The INCO-TRUST project has a networking session on Day 2 of ICT 2010 (28th of September 2010)  from 11:00 - 12:30. The focus of the session will be building a long term strategy for international collaboration in trust and security. The purpose of the session is twofold: 1) to outline the key themes and topics across the international communities identified over the years, and 2) to work out ways of achieving global co-operation for these topics and laying out a roadmap to do so over the next 12 months. If you are visiting ICT 2010 and work in ICT Trust, security and privacy or related topics, especially if from a non - EU bases, please make contact with Jim Clarke < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >.

The 1st International Workshop on Measurability of Security in Software Architectures (MeSSa 2010 ) was held on 23^rd August 2010. The workshop had excellent papers on approaches to measuring security in software architectures for determining security level or performance of a system, service or product, required taxonomies and  definition of security and security assurance metrics to name a few. The workshop concluded with a panel session on best practices on measuring and gathering evidence of security levels and main research challenges associated to measuring security. The final slides will be available shortly on the MeSSa 2010 web site.  

The first workshop of the EU- India Spirit Coordination Action project was held on 3^rd August 2010 in Hyderabad, India. EU-India Spirit is supporting and facilitating international ICT cooperation and joint research activities, connecting European and Indian ICT stakeholders and boosting the impact of EU-India ICT Policy Dialogue. There are three working groups within the project WG 1: ICT Addressing Societal challenges, WG 2: AudioVisual Media & Internet and WG 3: Emerging Technologies and eInfrastructures. Two of the partners of INCO-TRUST are nominated experts within the working groups. Jim Clarke of Waterford Institute of Technology is a member and co-chair of WG2 and Neeraj Suri of TU Darmstadt is a member in WG3. On 4^th August, within eIndia 2010, India's largest ICT event, in a special workshop entitled Collaborative ICT Research & Innovation between India and the European Union (EU) - Opportunities, Challenges and Success Stories, the INCO-TRUST project was presented by Jim Clarke of Waterford IT.

A two-day conference entitled The Dungarvan Conference 2010: Global Intelligence Forum was held on 11-13^th July 2010 in Waterford, Ireland. It was organised by the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies (MCIIS) in Erie, Pennsylvania, US. The conference attracted over 150 delegates from 15 countries to discuss "best practices in intelligence analysis". Delegates included representatives from the intelligence and security services communities in Sweden, Czech Republic, Romania, the US, the UK, Canada, and Belgium. Irish delegates included representatives from the INCO-Trust coordinator, Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT-TSSG), An Garda Síochána, the Criminal Assets Bureau, the IDA, Enterprise Ireland, the Revenue Commissioners, DCU and the Department of Justice.

The conference keynote speakers included former US secretary for homeland security Tom Ridge, who said Mercyhurst was "a model for intelligence education" and hopes to develop a centre in Dungarvan, Waterford. Mr Ridge, the main security adviser to former president George W Bush following the 9/11 attacks, said the world was now a safer place following improved intelligence gathering and the sharing of information between the United States and its allies.

It was reported in the final session that the Institute for Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst, in the Pennsylvanian city of Erie, is understood to be in advanced talks with Waterford Institute of Technology and the local authorities regarding the establishment of a local centre and the continuation of this prestigious event on an annual basis.

Additional information and analysis of the conference can be found on the Trust and Security blog of WIT-TSSG.

Jim Clarke of the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group of

Waterford Institute of Technology made a presentation at the IST Africa 2010

event in Durban, South Africa on 19^th May 2010.

The presentation, entitled Balancing Security and Privacy in eGovernment Services

was based on a paper of the same name and took place during a session entitled

eGovernment - Services .

In photo from  L-R.

Mzomuhle Nkosi, CSIR, South Africa; Lerato Lerato, National University of Lesotho, Lesotho;

Jameson MBALE, University of Namibia, Namibia; Immo Onuegbu (Session Chair), Ministry of

Education, Namibia; James Clarke, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland

The Trust and Security communities were represented during two sessions during the recent FIA Valencia event. The session ‘Foundations of Trust in the Future Internet' explored the human and technical foundations of trust in the Future Internet with the intent of developing a roadmap for future cross domain research. In his introductory remarks, session chair Volkmar Lotz stated  "there was a need to come back to the foundations of Trust in the Future Internet because security and trust is really ‘cross-cutting' topic, and must be addressed from many different angles to achieve confidence and trust in the services and infrastructure of FI to readily participate in a digital life and digital society".   Four invited speakers each addressed a key topic for the Future Internet:

·         Security Challenges for the Future Internet, Prof. Evangelos Markatos, FORTH and University of Crete 

·         Provenance in the Future Internet, Dr. Jose Manuel Gomez-Perez, R&D Director, iSOCO

·         Economics of Trust and Security, Dr Simon Shiu, System Security Lab, HP Labs  

·        Legal frameworks for Trust in the Future Internet, Mireille Hildbrandt, Associate Professor and Senior Researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Erasmus University Rotterdam.

During Architecture Session 2 on Concrete results for the Future Internet, the work undertaken during the Identity session of FIA Stockholm and follow up activities related to a sustainable ID Framework for the Future Internet were presented by Amardeo Sarma of NEC Laboratories Europe. The coverage of Privacy enhancing ID management across the layers has been recognised as a good example of collaboration across the work streams of the Future Internet Assembly. The Trust and Identity caretakers, along with the relevant researchers, in the final plenary session of FIA Stockholm decided that this topic was mature enough to pursue in a more results oriented way. This culminated in a focussed "interim FIA workshop" held on 3rd March 2010 dedicated to the topic, whose principle results were highlighted in a presentation entitled Sustainable Identity Framework for the Future Internet during the Towards a Future Internet Architecture Session 2 (Concrete results are already available).  The full report of this interim workshop is available at the Trust and Identity caretakers wiki. The presentation highlighted the consensus amongst the participants of the necessity to leverage existing privacy solutions of PrimeLife, TAS3 and SWIFT towards privacy enabled identity systems and infrastructures in both the short term (PPP) and longer term (FP7/FP8) with a distinct goal of sustaining better privacy and security than available today and making privacy a European trademark of the 21st century.

The Trust and Identity "caretakers" of FIA are Nick Wainwright, Jim Clarke, Volkmar Lotz and Michel Riguidel. Their main role is coordinating the activities within and between all the cross domain clusters and are intermediaries between the European Commission and the FI projects that are signatories to the Bled Declaration.

A Conference on Trust in the Information Society, jointly organized by "F5" Trust & Security Unit (DG Information Society and Media, European Commission), INTECO (The National Institute of Communication Technologies) and eSEC-AETIC (Spanish Technology Platform for Security, Trust and Dependability), will take place on 10-11 February, in Léon, Spain.

The programme is fully dedicated to the area of Trustworthy ICT; hence including security, trust, identity, privacy and data protection at the network as well as the services level. It will give particular attention to technology, legal, industrial and societal aspects of current developments towards a Web-based world. Special attention will also be given to the findings of the Advisory Board for Research and Innovation for Security, Privacy and Trustworthiness in the Information Society (RISEPTIS - click to get final report ). High level experts from Public Administrations, Industry and Research will speak on the challenges in RTD and policy to ensure an Information Society which will be secure and trustworthy. Please do not forget to register for the event.

An international workshop is being held in Seoul, Korea on 25 - 26th January 2010 to enlighten cooperative research challenges to ensure Trustworthy ICT, including trust, security, privacy and protection against cyber attacks.

The workshop is hosted by Korea Institute of Information Security and Cryptology (KIISC) and Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT), INCO-TRUST project, supported by European Commission DGINFSO Unit F5, ICT Trust and Security Research and sponsored by Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE).

The program and additional information can be found here.

The Future Internet Assembly (FIA ’09) conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden at the Kista Science City over 23-24th November 2009. FIA'09 Stockholm brought together over 300 stakeholders in the Future Internet developments from policy makers, industry and academia, coming from mainly from EU member countries and abroad. There were a number of sessions dedicated to ICT Trust and Security topics including eID approaches for the Future Internet and How to Measure Trust. The final session materials and slides can be found at the Trust and Identity Caretakers¹ wiki.

¹ An FIA “caretaker” coordinates the activities in the cross domain clusters within the FIA and between projects that are signatory to the Bled Declaration .The Future Internet Assembly (FIA ’09) conference was held in Stockholm and Kista Science City over 23-24th November 2009. FIA'09 Stockholm brought together over 300 stakeholders in the Future Internet developments from policy makers, industry and academia, coming from mainly from EU member countries and abroad. There were a number of sessions dedicated to Trust and Security topics including eID approaches for the Future Internet and How to Measure Trust. The final session materials and slides can be found at the Trust and Identity Caretakers wiki.

All of the INCO-TRUST partners participated to the FIA Trust and Identity  workshop held in Brussels on 7th October 2009. The purpose of the Workshop was to prepare for the Trust and Identity Sessions at the Future Internet Assembly Stockholm event being held in on 23 - 24th November 2009.

The full agenda and slides of the 7th October workshop can be found here. 

INCO-TRUST has published the Pan-European - Global Alignment of Trust, Security and Dependability report presenting an analysis of stakeholders, research funding instruments and ongoing research efforts carried out in Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia. The objective of the report is to support trust, security and dependability (TSD) alignment in these countries and to help identifying opportunities for collaboration amongst programme management and research organisations. Additionally, this report will contribute to a better understanding of the building mechanisms for international cooperation.

RISEPTIS (Research and Innovation for SEcurity, Privacy and Trustworthiness in the Information Society) is a high-level advisory board in ICT research on security and trust aiming at providing visionary guidance on policy and research challenges in the field of security and trust in the Information Society. The board recently published their final report here.

Meetings were held between the European Commission's Mr. Jacques Bus, Head of Unit of DG INFSO F5 Trust and Security Unit and the Japan Science and Technology Agency during and following the 2nd Japan EU Symposium on the "New Generation Network" and the "Future Internet" held 13-14th October 2009 in Tokyo, Japan.

Starting in June 2009, the INCO-Trust project supported Mr. Bus in coordinating with the Japan and Science Technology Agency (JST) to begin organising joint EU-Japan meetings and site visits around this event. These interactions resulted in a number of fruitful exchanges, including a meeting with the International Department of the JST, Center for Research and Development Strategy (CRDS in JST/MEXT) and meeting with the Director of ICT (MIC). Within these meetings, an interest was expressed to include the areas of Trust and security and dependability in their formal scheme of EU – Japan cooperation, where now only direct cooperation with certain member states is implemented. In particular, the areas of Trust and security with its horizontal impact and interdisciplinary attention was seen as attractive for CRDS/JST, as it would be more the responsibility of MIC to work on pure ICT research and cooperation.

On 23rd September 2009, a meeting was held in Washington, D.C. between the European Commission DG INFSO Head of Unit of F5, Jacques Bus, and National Science Foundation. During the meeting, the NSF delegation confirmed their commitment to working together with the EU to create an international community that develops a common research agenda together in the Trust and Security areas needed by all concerned to avoid needless duplication or needed for interoperability of different systems worldwide (some examples discussed were eID and privacy). Some of the preferred subjects to consider in upcoming workshops included trustworthy international data transfer and security models for the Future Internet.

Inco-Trust participated as a keynote speaker and rapporteur in the EU-Brazil (EUBR 2009 ) workshop held at the University of São Paulo from 8th to 9th of September 2009. The workshop goal was to promote collaboration, idea and exchange of experiences and joint research on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) between Brazilian and European Union Academic and Scientific Communities and industries. The Workshop had sessions on a number of important challenges with ICT concerning Future Internet (including Security, Privacy and Trust), e-infrastructure, Microelectronics/Microsystems and Embedded System & Control. Slides presented by Jim Clarke can be found here. A short report of the session can be found here. 

 The latest issue of the newsletter about ICT R&D in Trust and Security from the Unit F5 of the Directorate General Information Society and Media of the European Commission can be found here. Previous newsletters can be found at the following website.

On June 18 2009, an information day was organised by Unit F5 “Trust and Security“ for the objective 1.4 Trustworthy ICT in view of the forthcoming Call 5 to open on July 31st. Participants had the ability to present a few slides during the proposers forum or share a project concept with participants. All the presentations of the day are now available here.