ETSI ramps up cybersecurity standards push

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute – ETSI – concluded its recent cyber security week with a cross-industry call to collaborate on security standards.

In what seems to have been some kind of convention for standards bodies the ITU, ISO, CEN/CENELEC, NIST, IETF and W3C were all represented at this cybersecurity deep-dive, as well as other equivalent people from industry, government, regulators and academia. The aim was to take stock of current technological trends, such as IoT, and consider the consequently evolving threat landscape.

ETSI referred to its CYBER (not, it seems, an acronym) technical committee, as being tasked with addressing security issues on a global scale and urging the need to make ‘security by design’ the default approach in standards development. This committee is also tasked with ensuring standards conform to other initiatives such as the European Digital Single Market.

In other news, the recent ISPA awards used their opportunity to identify UK politicians they thought had done most to help or hinder the internet industry.

The joint winners of the Internet Hero award were MPs David Davis and Tom Watson “for their legal challenge to guarantee the privacy of their constituents and their efforts to raise the level of debate in Parliament on communications data issues.”

Contrastingly Home Secretary Theresa May was branded Internet Villain of the year “for forging ahead with communications data legislation that would significantly increase capabilities without adequate consultation with industry and civil society.” Other shortlisted villains included internet.org and Sir Malcolm Rifkind.