European Commission takes steps against cyber terrorism in Security Union Report
The European Commission has recently published its 11th Security Union Report (the ‘Report’), which includes a set of operational and practical anti-terrorism measures (COM (2917) 608 of 18 October 2017).
The package presented aims at tackling terrorism and security threats to citizens in the EU, in particular those threats utilising cyber technologies and networks, as well as building resilience against those threats. With this initiative, the Commission is responding to the increased vulnerabilities in the EU and is striving to implement the measures over the next 16 months.
The proposed measures are manifold and directed towards cutting terrorist financing, countering online radicalisation, boosting cyber security, enabling decryption where required to break into terrorist networks, and strengthening crossborder cooperation and information exchange between the relevant authorities, as well as removing obstacles for obtaining financial transaction data. In this article, Dr Alexander Duisberg, Partner at Bird & Bird, discusses the Commission’s Report and the possible implications in the field of cyber security.
This article first appeared in Cyber Security Practitioner November 2017.
