Europe to get new data security body

By Editorial Staff, Resource Recycling

A new inter-governmental agency has been created to manage some of the European Union's largest IT systems.

EU General Affairs Council voted on September 12 in favor of the creation of a pan-European body that would oversee the management Europe's Schengen Information System (a law enforcement database), a database of visa and immigration data, and EURODAC (a fingerprint data for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants). The new, yet-to-be-named office will be headquartered in Estonia and is expected to come online next year.

Given both the volume of sensitive data on the three networks, as well as the number of countries involved, the new organization is expected to have its hands full implementing a data security strategy. Europe currently has guidelines in place for member countries' management of data, as well as a "Data Protection Directive" that applies to WEEE scrap. However, each country's implementation of these regulations varies and part of what the new agency will be tasked with is unifying the life-cycle management of IT devices under its jurisdiction.

To return to the newsletter, click here