EU Industrial Policy: recommendations to support Europe's leadership in six business areas

On Tuesday, The European Commission today published recommendation on how the EU can boost its industry in six target sectors, including cybersecurity. Eurosmart has contributed to this work by attending the the Strategic Forum on Important Projects of Common European Interest dedicated to cybersecurity and has provided recommendations on critical infrastructure, PKI, DNS and advanced cryptography.

In December 2018, the Commission approved, under the State aid IPCEI framework, €1.75 billion of public investment, which will unlock an additional €6 billion of private investment for research and innovation in microelectronics. Four European countries – France, Germany, Italy and the UK – and around 30 companies and research institutions will join forces to enable research and innovation in this key technology.

Recommendations regarding the Digital Industry

The final report states that the European companies provide just 5 percent of cybersecurity services worldwide despite the EU making up 26 percent of the global market.

The experts have selected five key domains as building bloc’s capabilities to be set up over the next five years:

1. Securing 5G for cybersecurity innovation and services. Actions include creating favorable conditions for 5G networks, supporting start-ups, scale-ups and research with a focus on securing strategic 5G services and identifying key technologies and service requirements for secure 5G and providing funding.

2. Sharing and exploiting information on threats, vulnerability and incidents. Recommendations include implementing existing rules for disclosure and information sharing on incidents/breach reporting and for vulnerabilities detection, while examining the possibility of mandatory disclosure in certain areas/cases that are not covered by the NIS Directive.

3. Securing highly critical applications and essential services: electricity, gas, water, vehicle. Points include setting up an alliance integrating stakeholders of highly critical infrastructures (network operators, technology suppliers, cybersecurity solution providers, standard and certification bodies, etc.) for defining cybersecurity standards and test procedures.

4. Developing and deploying end-to-end data protection solutions using advanced cryptography. Actions include developing an ad-hoc advanced encryption algorithm to support European regulation and deploying these solutions to allow safe transmission, storage and exploitation of this data in insecure environments.

5. Creating a framework and infrastructure for secure data communication, storage and handling. Recommendations call for a cloud framework with a high level of authentication and secure data lake, as well as creating a dedicated European-wide harmonized communication framework and infrastructure for secure data sharing.

Focus on the IIoT and Cybersecurity value chains

Industrial IoT

IIoT is a potential source of growth and productivity for industry, would provide a better safety and better working conditions. The IoT market is estimated at €80 billion by 2025 which means €1 trillion value for whole EU economy. 

- Build a common, secure and trusted EU industrial loT and data ecosystem.

- Speed up establishing the European cloud infrastructure and develop new generation data exploitation tools and artificial intelligence applications.

- Support the roll-out of industrial 5G infrastructure.

 Cybersecurity

The Increasing importance of cybersecurity in the European economy would only be beneficial if Europe can master new digital advances.

- Support coordinated investments and support measures in secure 5G.

- Sharing information on threats, vulnerability and incidents among Member States and industry.

- Focus on highly critical applications and essential services like electricity, gas, water, transport.

- Establish a European data space with secure end-to-end communications and data protection solutions.