Security EU Will Concentrate Security Research Efforts on Airports, Hospitals, and Smart Cars

[vissha]

EU Will Concentrate Security Research Efforts on Airports, Hospitals, and Smart Cars

Internet of Things devices scare EU regulators to death

ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, has announced its plans for the year of 2016, and their research will focus on the security of airports, the healthcare sector, smart cars, and public smart roads.

At the end of every year, government agencies allocate a lot of their time into putting together budgets and plans for the upcoming year.

As this year is coming to a close, ENISA has published its program for 2016, and to no surprise, the agency is focusing its efforts on the Internet of Things (IoT) sector.

IoT devices have been around for a while, and even if this wasn't the year when they first came into the public eye, it was the year when everyone has learned about their weaknesses.

Thanks to a series of highly publicized hacking cases that ranged from cars to fridges, and from baby monitors to CCTV cameras, the public is now well aware that despite the benefits they can bring, these new type of devices also put their users in danger.

ENISA wants to bring more order into the world of IoT devices

Converging on critical infrastructure, ENISA's mission for the upcoming year will focus on three crucial sectors where the hacking of Internet-connected devices can lead to serious consequences, even with a massive loss of lives.

Healthcare, airport safety, and public roads will benefit from ENISA's research during 2016, and the agency hopes that the recommendations it will issue by the end fo next year will reach the EU's Parliament floor by 2017 so they can be adopted into continent-wide laws.

Why only these three domains? Mainly because of the proliferation of Internet-connected equipment in hospitals and airports, more and more public-facing healthcare portals that can be easily hacked, new supply chain technologies that will be introduced in European airports, the introduction of more smart cars on European roads, and the ever-evolving concept of smart roads.

You can read the entire ENISA 2016 program here. The report is 54-pages long, but the content we referred in this article is on page 14.

Source