Trusted Computing Initiative on the Spectrum of EU Cyber-Security Legal Framework

Abstract

EU is admittedly investing into technological advancements that would protect the users’ security, trust, and privacy, by funding privacy by design and privacy by default research and technologies. The legal framework seems unprepared in dealing effectively with the rising sophisticated cyberattacks, therefore EU is coping to improve the overall network and information security, along with data protection, through the newly introduced and long anticipated General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Network and Information Security Directive (NIS). Trusted Computing (TC) is a technology that aims to protect the user, and the integrity of her machine and her privacy against third-party users. To defeat security threats, what is needed are “networks of security” rather than isolated security solutions and “gated communities”. It was argued that technologies like TC can be used to build secure networks and if adopted by Critical Infrastructures (CIs), to avoid cascade effects in interdependent CIs, as well as to standardize components, to comply with EU’s cybersecurity framework.