The aim of this work package is to develop the project’s second, transversal cross-disciplinary theme focusing on trust and resilience.
There is a growing realisation that for an on-line business or public service to flourish or indeed for any digital or data-dependant service (such as a health service or e-justice court case administration) to operate properly, there must exist a strong level of trust in it by all users, including customers, service providers, corporations, professionals, lawyers, judges, court-workers, etc.
ID Management
ID management has been a subject of discussion in both computing and data protection circles for over three decades but it has recently come to the fore as a subject of legislative debate in the USA and in Europe. This is especially so since a person’s identity is used for many reasons in social networking and other forms of user-generated content as well as profiling using search engine behaviour. The commoditisation of personal data and the promise of pattern recognition and predictive abilities of big data analytics has made the functional separation of metadata, personal identifiers and actual content one of the main design elements of several new eco-systems.
Reconciling performance, privacy and pecuniary benefit in off-site computing
The exponential way in which the quantity of personal data and the number of users who have access to the cloud has multiplied also means that risk of unauthorised access and use of personal data held in the cloud has also multiplied. The research will examine how the economic and social benefits of cloud computing can be maximised while the risk to abuse of personal data is correspondingly minimised. This task will explore these themes by organising a workshop bringing together stakeholders, policy makers and academics to determine current practices, tools used and a preliminary understanding of the current technological and legal dimensions of cloud computing.
Forensic and digital evidence
This task will explore two aspects of the need to create trust and resilience by increasing reliability and admissibility of forensic digital evidence and also by developing and adopting pan-European and international standards for the creation, storage, transmission and use of digital evidence. The research will study on the safeguards required to make digital evidence reliable and resilient. The research will also explore the operational and legal requirements for data packing as well as study the societal and legal implications for using trusted third parties to store digital evidence.
Citizens’ perceptions on security
This task will explore the concepts of trust and resilience in relation to citizens’ perceptions on security and the development of security behaviour. The research will study on means to increase trust and resilience through a better understanding of citizens’ perception of security threats and security institutions. In the last years a number of studies have been carried out in the course of European funded projects (such as in the SMART, RESPECT, PRISMS, SURVEILLE, IRISS etc.) exploring citizens’ perceptions. This research will focus on identifying and analysing the cultural and societal factors which influence perceptions of security and seek to develop a theoretical framework for increasing the overall resilience of the population.
Another relevant aspect will comprise the analysis on means to increase organizational resilience in the context of an information technology change and the research will focus on the issue of cost-effectiveness in LEAs and SIS intelligence operations in the field of cybersecurity.
