Dr. Steve Purser represented ENISA in two panel discussions at the Internet Governance Forum in Egypt.
In the first panel, entitled ‘Balancing the need for security and the concerns for civil liberties’ he stressed the point that this issue will not be solved by regulation alone and that it is important to use a combination of techniques to achieve a sensible balance between security and civil liberties.
In his concluding remarks, he noted that the panel had identified three types of activity that could sensibly contribute to achieving such a balance:
- Helping citizens to develop simple risk management techniques for the electronic world (electronic common sense).
- Appropriate use of technology.
- Regulation.
He also stressed the fact that context is extremely important when designing security solutions and that rules driven or check-list approaches are no substitute for clear thinking.
In the second panel on the subject of net neutrality, Dr. Purser explained why security should be seen as a necessary condition for neutrality and went on to explain what ENISA is doing to support the Member States and the Commission in the area of Internet resilience. He noted that a key success factor in securing the Internet of the future will be the extent to which different communities are able to work together to achieve common goals and cited the European Public Private Partnership for Resilience (EP3R) as a practical example of efforts to form such a partnerships.