eema, the Independent European e-Identity & Security Association, today reported the most successful ISSE (Information Security Solutions Europe) conference ever. The three-day event took place in Madrid, Spain and was attended by more than 300 delegates.
ISSE 2008 has been widely acknowledged as one of the most important forums to take place in Europe this year, for bringing together technology vendors, governments, academics, industry associations and legal professionals to collaborate on issues of IT security, particularly a Europe wide identity initiative. The Chairman of TeleTrusT and the ISSE Programme Committee, Prof. Dr. Norbert Pohlmann states, “The most important issue at ISSE 2008 was the revelation that some countries had started to offer ID cards which also offer identification and authentication via the Internet.”
The experiences of the ISSE 2008 host nation ID card scheme was revealed by Deputy Director General at the State Secretariat for Telecommunications and Information Society, Spain, Victor Izquierdo. He explained that 6.5 million Spanish citizens have an electronic national ID card, enabling them to access 500 services. Also, as a result of an action plan implemented in 2005, the country has seen Internet usage grow from 12 million to 22 million, representing a leap from 66% to 90% of the population.
Executive Director of eema, Roger Dean adds, “There are clear interoperability challenges concerning ID schemes and one of the major problems is the freedom of Member States to implement EU Directives in their own way and according to national requirements. However, there are several projects now underway to knit the EU security infrastructure together.”
One such project was the subject of a special workshop at ISSE. STORK (Secure idenTity acrOss boRders linKed) is a €20 million, three-year project to enable citizens, businesses and governments to use their identity credentials in any Member State. Fourteen countries are involved in the project – 13 EU Member States and Iceland.
Providing another challenge in the implementation of secure identity across borders was a representative from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Germany, Andreas Reisen who raised the issue of educating citizens to give their biometric details (should they be required) voluntarily for ID cards. He suggested that one way of getting people to give such information voluntarily could be to inaugurate ‘fast lines’ at airports for example. In fact, he estimated that if fast track systems were not implemented at Charles de Gaulle airport (Paris, France), then in three years time there would simply not be enough time to check all travellers in.
Pohlmann concludes on the success of ISSE 2008, “The non-profit ISSE conference is always very interesting because of the different disciplines and the high-level participants in the IT security field. It is the ideal platform to push such European IT security issues and requirements internationally.”
The next ISSE conference will take place in October 2009. If you would like to read the full report from ISSE 2008, it is available to download from here:
