Mission

Identity, Privacy and Trust.

For modern citizens electronic media and devices are part of their everyday live. The confidentiality of data stored on our PCs but also on numerous online repositories (and/or services) is as much part of our privacy as the integrity of our homes, the free access to electronic information channels is as much part of our right of information freedom as the right to buy a newspaper and we express our opinions with the help of electronic media. Hence we use the Internet as a place to exercise our basic rights and our society becomes increasingly dependent on information and communication technologies.

Infrastructure needs to keep up with the social development. Privacy and Identity need technical support, mechanisms to establish trust needs to be implemented. The Declaration of the Future Internet Assembly (FIA) "Towards a European approach to the Future Internet” envisages the development and deployment of technologies ensuring the robustness and security of the networks, managing identities, protecting privacy and creating trust in the on-line world.

ENISA is approaching this area with the following strategy: Facilitating rapid deployment of research results: focusing on alternative trust models such as reputation and web-of trust, as well as a stock-taking of authentication methods;
Fostering a Pan-European approach to privacy: focusing on rights and obligations of users as well as service-providers. Providing guidelines on the use of available privacy enhancing technologies and their implications for anonymity;
Development of guidelines for regulatory review and interpretation: focusing on identity and authentication in new scenarios (e.g. RFID, cloud computing). To avoid unrealistic requirements on commercial bodies and infringement of personal liberties.

With regard to Identity, Privacy and Trust, ENISA is working and achieving significant results in the following areas: