Publication date:January 31, 2008
Network and information security are of significant and growing economic importance.
The direct cost to Europe of protective measures and electronic fraud is measured in
billions of euros; and growing public concerns about information security hinder the development
of both markets and public services, giving rise to even greater indirect costs.
For example, while writing this report, the UK government confessed to the loss
of child-benefit records affecting 25 million citizens. Further revelations about losses of
electronic medical information and of data on children have called into question plans for
the development of e-health and other systems.
Information security is now a mainstream political issue, and can no longer be considered
the sole purview of technologists. Fortunately, information security economics has
recently become a live research topic: as well as collecting data on what fails and how,
security economists have discovered that systems often fail not for some technical reason,
but because the incentives were wrong. An appropriate regulatory framework is just as
important for protecting economic and other activity online as it is offline.
This report sets out to draw, from both economic principles and empirical data, a
set of recommendations about what information security issues should be handled at the
Member State level and what issues may require harmonisation – or at least coordination.
In the report, fifteen key policy proposals are made. A
consultative meeting was held in December 2007 which established that almost all of these proposals
had wide stakeholder support and provide a basis for future action
by ENISA and the European Commission.