Commission plans cybersecurity rules for internet-connected machines

A new plan to overhaul EU telecoms law, which digital policy chiefs Günther Oettinger and Andrus Ansip presented three weeks ago, aims to speed up internet connections to meet the needs of big industries like car manufacturing and agriculture as they gradually use more internet functions.

But that transition to more and faster internet connections has caused many companies to worry that new products and industrial tools that rely on the internet will be more vulnerable to attacks from hackers.

EU lawmakers want to dispel those fears by creating rules that force companies to meet tough security standards and go through multi-pronged certification processes to guarantee privacy.

“That’s really a problem in the internet of things. It’s not enough to just look at one component. You need to look at the network, the cloud. You need a governance framework to get certification,” Thibault Kleiner, Oettinger’s deputy head of cabinet, said  at a Brussels conference yesterday evening (4 October).

Kleiner said the Commission would encourage companies to come up with a labelling system for internet-connected devices that are approved and secure.

Firms from a range of industries, including energy, automotive and healthcare, joined a platform on the internet of things that the Commission set up last year as part of its efforts to push companies to embrace industrial use of the internet. Big companies like Cisco, Bosch, Nokia and Philips are part of the group, along with several telecoms operators.

14 ottobre 2016