L-R: Pascal Steichen, CEO of SECURITYMADEIN.LU ; Dr. Jean-Philippe Humbert, Deputy Director of ILNAS; Credit: ILNAS

The Luxembourg Institute of Standardisation, Accreditation, Safety and Quality of Products and Services (ILNAS) and SECURITYMADEIN.LU held a conference on "Standarisation & Cybersecurity" on Monday 21 October 2019.

With the spread of connected digital systems, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are subject to ever more numerous and sophisticated cyberattacks. Technical standards provide guidelines and good practices for dealing with these risks and for better protecting cyberspace. In this context, ILNAS and SECURITYMADEIN.LU invited national stakeholders to a conference last week to present relevant technical standardisation activities for the cybersecurity domain and their link to the national ecosystem.

Dr. Jean-Philippe Humbert, Deputy Director of ILNAS, opened the conference by presenting ILNAS's actions for the development of ICT technical standardisation as part of the national standardisation strategy 2010-2020, which was updated in 2014. In particular, he focused on the involvement of national standardisation delegates in the field of cybersecurity and on the main European standardisation technical committees active in this field. Dr. Humbert also mentioned the future national standardisation strategy (2020-2030), which includes promoting the use of standards and implementing a standardising approach dedicated to the construction and aerospace sectors, while pursuing efforts in the ICT sector. This future strategy will serve to educate on the technical standardisation of Smart ICT for younger generations as well as professionals. This will be done in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg, through the professional Master project "Technopreneurship: mastering smart ICT, standardisation and digital trust for enabling next generation of ICT solutions", which is scheduled to launch in September 2020.

Subsequently, Nicolas Domenjoud, head of the "ICT & Standardisation" sector within the Luxembourg standardisation body OLN, presented the new edition of the "Smart Secure ICT" standardisation analysis, a practical tool that can identify relevant technical standardisation activities in the field of Smart ICT (Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain), including standardisation developments related to cybersecurity and digital trust.

The afternoon continued with an overview of the work of the Technical Subcommittee ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 "Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection", presented by Clement Gorlt, cybersecurity and research manager at INCERT GIE and national delegate for standardisation. In particular, Clement Gorlt reviewed the draft standards of which he is currently co-publisher at the international level, namely ISO/IEC 27099 concerning public key infrastructure and ISO/IEC TS 27101, which proposes guidelines for the development of a cybersecurity framework.

Pascal Steichen, CEO of SECURITYMADEIN.LU, then detailed the mapping of the Luxembourg cybersecurity ecosystem, reviewing its developments in recent decades and the main activities that occupy the entities of this ecosystem. He also recalled the strong correlation between cybersecurity issues covered by national organisations and the technical standardisation work currently being carried out by European and international standardisation organizations, illustrating the importance for Luxembourg of being represented in technical standardisation committees.

Finally, ILNAS and SECURITYMADEIN.LU inaugurated a new area where these standards can be read; this "reading station" is installed in the premises of the Cybersecurity Competence Center (C3). Jérôme Hoerold, head of the OLN, explained the new station's function to the assembly through a live demonstration. 

The conference closed with a networking cocktail, during which participants could obtain more information on the various topics presented.