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

 During 6-7th October 2008 in Brussels, the 2008 Euro-Southeast Asia Cooperation Forum on ICT research took place in Brussels , under the aegis of the European Commission and of ASEAN and with the support of the SEACOOP FP7 project. As mentioned previously in Latest news, after submitting a proposal to SEACOOP, INCO-TRUST were invited to make a presentation on International cooperation activities sponsored by the EU at a Thematic session entitled Future Networks. Both during the session and in the networking activities, a number of excellent contacts were made with SEA Industry and Academia engaged in ICT Trust, privacy and security research and development activities. The presentation can be found here.

 On 16th September 2008, INCO-TRUST participated to the EuroTRUSTAmI’08 - European Research towards Trusted Ambient intelligence 2nd European Workshop. Co-organised by the  SERENITY IST project and Strategies Telecoms & Multimedia , EuroTRUSTAmI aims at providing a comprehensive vision of the European Research Projects that deals with advancing the AmI vision and providing secure and dependable computing environments in a context of open, heterogeneous and dynamic networks. INCO-TRUST was one of the 22 European research projects related to Ambient Intelligence & Security issues that presented their objectives, progresses and results, and finally exchange views to outline long term IT security strategies for Europe. Additional information on the program can be found here .

In August 2008, Professor Neeraj Suri of TU Darmstadt, Germany took part in high level meetings with NICTA regarding an EU-NICTA cooperation grant that the Australian government is planning to implement for future collaboration. In addition, Professor Suri was a guest lecturer during the 2008 Winter School on Data Management & Data Quality held during 15-20 August 2008 at The Australian National University. Professor Suri's lecture was on Software/OS Profiling for Design and Assessment of Dependable Software (& OS's) .

 INCO-TRUST participated in the First Asia Future Internet (AsiaFI ) School on Architecture and Building Blocks held during August 25 - August 29, 2008 at the International Center, Cheju National University, Jeju, Korea. AsiaFI was founded in 2007 to coordinate research and development on Future Internet among countries in Asia as well as with other continents.

 The FP6 PRIME Project (Privacy and Identity Management for Europe) held its closing event in Leuven on 21st July 2008. The full day workshop had a very interesting set of presentations, panel sessions and demonstrations of the significant present and future ongoing work in the FP6/FP7 ICT areas regarding identity and privacy.  The full complement of slides from the Workshop are available here. An unofficial record of the Workshop can be found here.

 In April 2008, the INCO-TRUST project submitted a proposal to a consultation launched by the Support Action SEACOOP project. In June 2008, we learned that the proposal was accepted (out of 70 submitted) by the consortium to be “kept in view” and the proposers were invited to the 2008 Euro-Southeast Asia Cooperation Forum on ICT research in Brussels being held on Oct. 6-7, 2008, under the aegis of the European Commission and of ASEAN. According to their web site, “this visibility should provide an ideal opportunity to proposers to further elaborate their proposals through networking and exchange of information, and possibly transform them into proposals to be submitted to the next FP7 ICT Call (to be launched some weeks after the event)”.

The first INCO-TRUST visitation to Japan took place during the week 19 – 23rd May 2008. In addition to providing a keynote address at a session on International cooperation at 5th International Service Availability Symposium (ISAS 2008), the project members met with the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and relevant JST sponsored research communities including the team research-based Core Research for Evolution Science and Technology (CREST) Program.

A full report of the mission can be found in the Visitations section of the web site.

The European Commission and the INCO-TRUST project  were invited to participate in a Plenary panel session on International cooperation at the U.S. National Science Foundation Cyber Trust Principal Investigators Meeting 2008 held 16-18 March 2008 at Yale University in New Haven, CT.

Jacques Bus, Head of Security Unit, DG Information Society and Media, ICT Programme of the European Commission and Neeraj Suri of Technische Universität Darmstadt of INCO-TRUST attended and made presentations.

The full NSF Cyber Trust web site, agenda and presentations can be found here.

INCO-TRUST were privileged to obtain a speaking slot in the upcoming 5th International Service Availability Symposium (ISAS 2008 ) being held in Tokyo on 19-21st May 2008. More details on the programme and summary of the INCO-TRUST presentation (21st May 2008 at 16:40) can be found here.

INCO-TRUST were invited to participate to the ICT-FORWARD Workshop held 17-18th April 2008 in Gothenborg, Sweden. ICT-FORWARD: Managing Emerging Threats in ICT Infrastructures is a Coordination Action project that started at the same time as INCO-TRUST and will have close links. The project aims at identifying, networking, and coordinating the multiple research efforts that are underway in the area of Cyber-threats defenses, and leveraging these efforts with other activities to build secure and trusted ICT systems and infrastructures. A summary of the INCO-TRUST presentation made at the workshop can be found here. INCO-TRUST are participating to a working group entitled Critical Systems set up during the Workshop. The final Workshop programme can be found here. A full report of the Workshop will be made available by the ICT-FORWARD project.

You will find an inaugural newsletter for the Inco-Trust project here »

In January 2008, the CISTRANA project, the European initiative for the Coordination of IST Research and National Activities, organised a seminar on ICT Trust and security. A number of the INCO-TRUST partners participated and the full agenda and presentations can be found here »

As part of its work in establishing a global platform for ICT Trust, Security and dependability, the project undertook a fact finding mission to Australia in February 2008. The core goals of the project involve stimulating, promoting and co-ordinating the multiple international research efforts underway in the areas of cyber trust, security and dependability. In its first six months, the project is concentrating on making contacts with the key stakeholders in all the participating North American and Asia-Pacific countries. The first visitation to Australia took place in February 2008 for the purposes of (a) understanding the Australian ICT-Security programs/profile and (b) ascertaining potential for joint ICT TSD activities. The mission resulted in a significant number of contacts in order to scope areas of potential collaboration within the project. Working meetings were held with both Australian governmental and the relevant research communities. The research areas identified for collaboration included: Security and Trust issues within the future internet; Web 2.0; distributed authorization; trust management; security-enhancing mobile agents; and, especially, mobile and wireless network security etc. - very core technologies that are (a) implementation independent and (b) very applicable for future internet models. Another key area for collaboration included work towards ensuring user-centric privacy and identity management. This aspect was further strengthened through a Privacy Partnership workshop in which the INCO-TRUST participants were invited as keynote speakers to present the EU Research & Development priorities on security, privacy and trust. A further area of potential interest was the possibility for establishing linkages to International test-beds for ICT security, trust and privacy.

A full report of the trip can be found in the Visitations section of the web site.

ThinkTrust (Think Tank for Converging Technical and Non-Technical Consumer Needs in ICT Trust, Security and Dependability) is a new Coordination Action that started on 1st January 2008 and will run for 30 months. The action addresses the definition of new areas of work in ICT Security Research, and will further EU's strategic thinking and positioning in the field.

For this, it will set up an ICT Security Research Advisory Board that will bring together the opinions and requirements of a comprehensive range of stakeholders with regard to trust, security and dependability issues in emerging ICT environments. It will be supported by targeted working groups from the stakeholder and research community that will address focused issues and questions.

For more information on this project, please contact the coordinator, Ms. Zeta Dooly (zdooly at tssg.org). The web site can be found at http://www.think-trust.eu