projects

SECUR-EU

Published in Privacy

energy cybersecurity artificial intelligence

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According to the ENISA report “Cybersecurity for SMEs”, around 80% of the European small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are seriously at risk if they don’t tackle six major cybersecurity challenges: 1) low awareness of threats; 2) inadequate protection for critical and sensitive information; 3) costs to implement cybersecurity measures, often combined with limited budget; 4) availability of cybersecurity specialists; 5) lack of suitable guidelines tailored for SMEs; 6) low management support.

Nonetheless, cyber-attacks on critical infrastructures and SMEs continue to grow year after year.

In this context, SECUR-EU project aims to foster a common culture of cybersecurity awareness on cybersecurity solutions specifically tailored for SMEs and critical infrastructures, as well as to provide enhanced Open-Source security solutions tested in HackOlympics initiatives.

CyberEthics Lab. (CEL) team will ensure that all SECUR-EU activities are carried out in compliance with fundamental ethics principles, as well as with existing and evolving EU regulatory framework. Moreover, CEL will collaborate to embed these principles into the development process of the Open-Source security solutions. Based on lessons learnt and assessments, CEL will provide policy makers and regulatory bodies with a final policy brief, including policy recommendations, addressing identified concerns during the project lifecycle.

Service involved

Assessment of technology impact on privacy

We help our clients and partners to achieve their business goals while addressing ethics, privacy and cybersecurity concerns in a manner that prevents conflicts, sanctions and loss of money derived by the lack of ethical and legal compliance to national and European applicable regulations. All information technologies must respect human fundamental rights and ensure the rights of people in relation to the protection of their private life, personal data and freedom. The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that replaced the Data Protection Directive in all EU member states on May 2018 introduces many new obligations for companies and a comprehensive set of rights for data subjects, including the right to an effective judicial remedy against a controller or a processor and the right to compensation. Therefore, in addition to being at the receiving end of an enforcement action, data controllers and processors may be subject to court proceedings and have to pay compensation to data subjects for their infringements of the GDPR. Our approach to help our clients to avoid this kind of issues consists of a holistic service composed by the following main components: providing a Data Protection Officer to drive the organization’s legal compliance action; mapping the data processed by the organisation to measure its impact on the ethical principles and legal framework; assessing the cybersecurity mechanisms used by the organisation technologies; conducting an impact assessment for all data processing mechanisms identifying ethical, legal and security risks; making recommendations for the implementation of the organisational and technical means to be compliant with the legal framework while ensuring data confidentiality (preserving authorized restrictions on information access and disclosure, including personal privacy and proprietary information protection), integrity (assurance that data is not modified or deleted in an unauthorized and undetected manner), availability (ensuring there’s timely and reliable access to and use of information) and accountability (supporting non‐repudiation, deterrence, fault isolation, intrusion detection and prevention, and after‐action recovery and legal action).

Ethics assessment of technology

We help our clients and partners in the process of critical analysis to examine the effects that the introduction and use of a technology may have on human rights, society, and the environment. This is a complex process that requires a systematic view and consideration of how technology might affect people and society at large in the short and long term. The ethical impact of technology is therefore crucial when developing and deploying new technologies, in order to mitigate the negative effects and maximise the benefits, and to enable developers, organisations and policy makers to make informed decisions. In this assessment, we assist our clients and partners to consider all relevant factors; there are several methodologies and approaches used to assess the ethical impact of technologies, including:

Privacy impact analysis: this type of analysis assesses the effects of technology on the privacy of individuals and their personal information. It considers the risks of monitoring and tracking, the consequences of possible data breaches and the security measures needed to protect users' privacy.
Social impact assessment: this type of analysis evaluates the effects of technology on society and the economy in general, considering impacts on unemployment, social equality, access to education and health, quality of life and environmental sustainability.
Ethical impact assessment: This type of analysis assesses the effects of technology on society's morals and values, considering impacts on social justice, accountability, transparency, human dignity and individual freedom.
Life cycle analysis: This type of analysis assesses the environmental impacts of technology throughout its life cycle, from production to use and end of life.

Ethical impact assessment of technologies therefore requires a multidisciplinary evaluation involving technology experts, ethics experts, legal experts, environmental experts and other stakeholders.