Successful conclusion of the fourth edition of the Annual Privacy Forum, held on the 7th and 8th September at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. The event provided a forum to academia, industry and policy makers for a discussion on privacy engineering and technical solutions to data protection.
The two-day event took place at the historic venue of former IG Farben headquarters. In the context of the conference a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between ENISA and F-Secure, setting a framework for both parties to share expertise and knowledge.
Goethe University Vice President Manfred Schubert-Zsilavecz and Chair of Mobile Business & Multilateral Security Kai Rannenberg discussed the relation to the infamous history of IG Farben and highlighted the importance of the right to privacy for a free and democratic society as part of the Human Rights Charter, a topic which has triggered debates in light of the data protection regulation and the European Digital Agenda.
ENISA’s Executive Director Udo Helmbrecht furthered the discussion in his opening speech: “Is privacy gone? Can technology help or is it harmful to privacy? In a changing world, do we need to resist or to adapt?” Deputy EDPS, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, welcomed the collaboration for more effective privacy protection and the colocation with the Internet Privacy Engineering Network Workshop in the same week.
Trust, collaboration and common sense for effective privacy
Thomas Kremer (Deutsche Telekom) in his keynote speech on 'Data Protection in the digital world' underlined the importance of trust and acceptance of ICT by the users, whereas Jacoba Sieders (ABN AMRO) in her closing keynote on 'Observations on privacy and data protection from a security perspective' presented the challenges in terms of privacy and data protection faced by large multi-national organisations that serve millions of customers.
The workshop of the EDPS on Internet Privacy Engineering Network, that followed the Annual Privacy Forum, highlighted the need for further joint work between engineers and lawyers.
Mikko Hypponen, security and privacy expert (F-Secure), spoke on the 'State of the Net'. With his key message “don’t press the button” audiences were reminded that many viruses are let in by the user. Hypponen elaborated on how to handle such issues, but in the end: “don’t press the button!"
This year’s panels looked into:
- online privacy tools for general public, dealing with the availability of reliable online privacy tools today
- appropriate security measures for the processing of personal data to further explore a risk based approach
- building a community for maturity evaluation of PETs to discuss a structured community approach, on the evaluation of the technology readiness, and maturity of current privacy enhancing technologies.
The original scientific contributions of this year’s APF are published in the following link (ISBN 978-3-319-44760-5). News about the next edition of the APF will be available soon on the website.
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APF poster
About the event: The event is jointly organized by DG CONNECT (European Commission Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology), ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security), The Chair of Mobile Business & Multilateral Security at Goethe University Frankfurt, and in partnership with the EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor).
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