‘Cooperative Models for Effective Public Private Partnerships’

A new guide with 36 recommendations for building effective public and private partnerships for resilient IT security has been launched by ENISA.

Across the EU, the critical infrastructure of most member States is in the hands of the private sector. Therefore, to provide secure and reliable system access for citizens and businesses, industry and governments must work together. The critical information infrastructures (CII) in Europe are fragmented, both geographically and because of competition among telecom operators.

To overcome this fragmentation, Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have evolved to protect the digital economy in many Member States, at different times, and under different legal frameworks. But this natural evolution means that there is no common definition of what constitutes a PPP.

In a world where threats to infrastructure do not respect national borders, the European Network and Information Security Agency’s (ENISA) new PPPs guide with 36 recommendations on how to successfully build a PPP, underlines the need for a common understanding across Europe. This is of particular importance for the European Public Private Partnership for Resilience (EP3R), a European Union initiative, which is liaising with national PPPs on critical information infrastructure protection (CIIP) issues.

The executive director of ENISA, Professor Udo Helmbrecht, comments: "There is a need for a truly international, global approach to cyber security and critical information infrastructure protection. No country can create a CIIP strategy in isolation, as there are no national boundaries in cyber-space. PPPs are consequently one of the agenda items for the special EU-US Working Group on cyber-security and cyber-crime.”

PPP taxonomy

The guide classifies PPPs for security and resilience in three types: Prevention Focused, Response Focused and Umbrella PPPs. The guide consolidates and validates a PPP-taxonomy, and gives advice in five main areas:

Why a PPP should be created (scope/threats);
Who should be involved (coverage, geographical/focus, interrelated links);
How a PPP should be governed;
What services and incentives should be offered;
When a PPP should be created and other timing points.

The guide draws on input from 30 questionnaires and 15 in-depth interviews with both public and private sector stakeholders across twenty countries. It also describes and maps PPPs from the USA, Canada and Australia, identifying critical success factors for information sharing, and ways forward for international collaboration.

Read the full report.

•Date: 11th October 2011 • Region: Europe/UK •Type: Article • Topic: Critical infrastructure

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