ENISA keeps abreast of the fast-paced digital evolution and the emergence of novel and innovative technologies, which highlight the importance of strategic foresight on emerging and future cybersecurity challenges.
Emerging Technologies
As one of ENISA’s core strategic objectives, foresight enables reflection on various possible futures and strategic preparation for plausible scenarios. Foresight has grown to become a major strategic planning tool for private corporations as well as the public sector and ENISA is actively working on cybersecurity foresight.
Together with the futures and foresight community, ENISA has developed a process to apply foresight to cybersecurity and is using this to identify future cybersecurity threats, map emerging challenges and prioritise efforts towards future technologies that may have implications for cybersecurity.
ENISA remains alert and prepared with the best up-to-date information and advice concerning cybersecurity developments in critical emerging areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G communications, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Indicative of this targeted focus was ENISA’s Artificial Intelligence Threat Landscape report of late 2020 and Supply Chain Threat Landscape of 2021, as well as the works of ENISA on IoT (baseline security recommendations, secure software development lifecycle and Industry 4.0).
ENISA continues to monitor and assess specific risks regarding emerging technologies through its membership in the NIS (Network and Information Systems) Cooperation Group, which also works to help ensure critical infrastructure in Europe remains secure. Moreover, ENISA has set up a dedicated ad hoc Working Group on Foresight for Emerging and Future Cybersecurity Challenges to systematically conduct foresight exercises.