EU should deepen cyber security cooperation with China: Digital expert

BRUSSELS - The European Union should further its digital cooperation with China to boost cyber security, a European digital expert told Xinhua here recently.

Luigi Gambardella is the president of ChinaEU, a business-led international association in Brussels that promotes bilateral digital cooperation.

He believed the European Commission should make use of the re-evaluation of the EU Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) and transform it into a Chinese-European agency for network and information security.

The consultation on the evaluation of ENISA is now well under way. Until now, no one has come forward with a constructive idea to overcome the dilemma between scrapping ENISA altogether or maintaining it in its current form. Stressing the possibility of using this review to set up a concrete EU-Chinese cooperation project would be timely.

"Together, the EU and China can make the Internet a safer place," Gambardella said.

ENISA was set up in 2004 to help ensure a high level of network and information security within the bloc. Its current objectives, mandate and tasks were set for a period ending in 2020.

The Commission is now holding a public consultation that will close on April 12. It aims to make proposals for the new ENISA mandate by June 2018.

Gambardella said that over the past few years, the cyber security landscape had evolved significantly in terms of threats, and technological, market, and policy developments.

EU's directive on Network Information Security, adopted last July, fundamentally changed the institutional setting by requiring member states to set up a specialized network of national computer security incident response teams to deal with cyber security threats.

Gambardella said the Chinese government pledged to make network and information security a national strategy and introduced a series of policies and other steps to strengthen information security and promote the development of an information security industry.

"In his Davos speech, President Xi expressed China's desire to cooperate with Europe. Why not further deepen digital cooperation in the area of cyber security?" Gambardella said.