Article 13a Expert Group convened by ENISA for its 31st meeting

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity hosted the 31^st meeting of the Article 13a Expert Group on 24^th and 25^th this week. The working group of European National Authorities supervises the security of electronic communications networks and services. The group is chaired by by Warna Munzebrock, the representative of the Agentschap Telecom, the Dutch Radiocommunications Agency.

Normally the group meets physically, three times a year. This time, the group met online, using an electronic communications platform. 40 experts attended from national authorities supervising the telecom sector across Europe, from 24 countries. Warna Munzebrock, the Dutch Chair of the Article 13a group opened the meeting, together with Evangelos Ouzounis, Head of the ENISA unit for Secure Services and Infrastructures.

On the first day, the group received updates from:

• Anders Lindell, from DG CONNECT, the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology;
• Machteld Vrieze, Chair of the Working Group of authorities for the digital services under the NIS Directive;
• Marcin Domagala, co-Chair of the NIS Cooperation Group on Digital Infrastructure;
• Vassiliki Gogou, co-Chair of BEREC’s Ad-hoc Working Group on 5G.

ENISA gave an update on both the Agency’s incident reporting platform - CIRAS and the pandemic toolkit project, whose aim is to provide an overview of good practices for telecom operators and authorities in dealing with pandemics.

An important part of the meeting was dedicated to an in-depth round table, where experts shared experiences and lessons learned during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the countries reported that, despite some issues, the communication networks and services sustained the change in usage and traffic well, and that operators successfully implemented their business continuity plans.

The supervision changes needed for the transposition and implementation of the EECC, the European Electronic Communications Code were addressed on the second day. The EECC will be in force from 2021. The group discussed a new model for the EU-wide reporting thresholds. ENISA also presented a first draft of the new security measures framework for the EECC. This framework takes into account the changes introduced by the EECC, but also the security requirements in the European Commission’s 5G toolbox.

The group will meet again in the third quarter of the year. Most of the work of the group this year will focus on updating the guidelines for security measures and incident reporting process in light of the EECC.

Background on Article 13a group

Established in 2010, the ENISA Article 13a Expert Group consists of more than 50 experts from national telecom security authorities from all EU countries, the EFTA countries, and EU candidate countries. The group is a forum for exchanging information and good practices on telecom security. It produces policy guidelines for European authorities on the implementation of EU telecom security rules, and publishes annual summary report about major telecom security incidents.

• This work is done under ENISA's Annual work program output O.1.2.3 “Supporting incident reporting activities in the EU”.
• The ENISA Article 13a Expert Group was set up in 2010. There have been 31 meetings so far.
• The security guidelines of the Article 13a Expert Group can be found on the ENISA Article 13a expert group portal.

Further Information:

ENISA Incident Reporting webpage

ENISA Article 13a Expert Group portal

To know more about the Article 13a Expert Group's work, or to join the telecom security mailing lists, to be up to date about our telecom security work or to receive invitations for future telecom security meetings, please contact us via resilience (at) enisa.europa.eu

For press questions and interviews, please contact press (at) enisa.europa.eu