The European Union’s ‘eEurope 2005’ Action Plan includes a multi-million Euro programme – dubbed MODINIS – to clamp down on information security risks
The political institutions of the European Union (EU) are said to be haggling over the size of a mega money programme aimed at boosting IT and communications security infrastructures across the region, writes Keith Nuthall.

The size of the cash pot for the MODINIS programme will be vast, with the European Parliament voting for it to be 21 million Euros (less than the 25 million Euro figures initially proposed by the European Commission, but a touch more than the amount allocated by the EU Council of Ministers).

A fundamental part of the EU’s ‘eEurope 2005’ Action Plan, the MODINIS programme is scheduled to run until 2005. The funds created will be made available to private companies and public authorities such that they might tighten their information security regimes. The idea is that Best Practice is adopted by way of educational information provided from Brussels.

Another key aim is to promote the roll-out of broadband networks by plugging the gaps in network security (such as vulnerabilities to worms and hacking).

Ironically, when considering the priority the EU has afforded the Internet, the approval of this programme of works has been delayed by arguments between the three EU institutions ever since MODINIS was first proposed last July.

Additionally, MODINIS will help to fund conferences on information security, as well as seminars and workshops concerning the topic. It should also provide a timely financial booster so that specific surveys, studies and the development of expertise in security mechanisms and their interoperability, network reliability and protection might all be realised.

Moneys will now be made available for examining current and emerging security threats, while the performance of all Member States when it comes to information security issues will be monitored on a much tighter basis.

Source

SMT

Postscript

The latest report produced by the Computer Security Institute in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that Fortune 1000 corporations lost $45 billion dollars last year alone due to the theft of proprietary information. Around the world, such losses top $0.6 trillion as a result of security breaches and virus attack clean-ups. 90% of the corporations that were surveyed had detected security incidents and breaches, while 75% of those firms reported losses due to cyber crime.