Liikanen promises to support European electronic communications through better security guarantees
Erkki Liikanen, the European Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society, pledged to tackle Internet security issues thereby promoting the European networked economy, while speaking at a conference for Information Security Solutions Europe (ISSE) held in Berlin on 4 October 1999. Security is the key to gaining users' trust and confidence, which in turn will encourage commercial and financial transactions on the Internet, he said. To build on this, Internet services need to build security features into their systems. The solution is cryptography, which Mr Liikanen said would 'certainly highly benefit from improved regulatory conditions'. The Commissioner cited the importance of a European approach, pointing to the success of EU policy on GSM technology, which led to the explosion of the mobile telecommunications market. He said: 'Incompatible national solutions in the field of cryptography create impediments that lessen the benefits of the internal market. Securing the internal market is crucial to the further development of the European security market, and thus of the European cryptographic industry. 'If security devices are to enter every home, they would certainly benefit from labels demonstrating that they are in conformity with quality requirements. This would greatly enhance consumer trust and confidence by allowing consumers to immediately identify safe information security products and services.' For practical reasons, the Commission has made a distinction between authentication and confidentiality, even though both rely on the same cryptographic technologies. A draft Directive on the authentication of electronic signatures has been tabled, with the aim of transposing coherent rules into the national legislation of the 15 Member States by the end of the year 2000. However the issue of confidentiality is more complex. The scrambling of electronic data poses legitimate public security concerns, and the Commission has found most proposed schemes 'impractical'. Nevertheless under the Amsterdam Treaty, they have pledged to work with Member States 'to ensure that, in a liberalised domestic environment, public safety will be fully guaranteed'. Furthermore, Mr Liikanen promised support for the desktop computing market from within the Fifth Framework Programme, in particular developing non-proprietary and open source systems to unlock its potential. However the Commission's principal concern is the safety issue. Mr Liikanen said: 'The bottom line is: no security, no trust, no notable shift towards commercial and financial transactions on the Internet.'