European law enforcement agencies and Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) met in The Hague this week to discuss ways to improve information sharing and co-operation across borders.
The 5th Europol EC3/ENISA Workshop saw various bodies from across Europe meet at Europol’s headquarters in the Netherlands for the two-day event titled, Information: From Taxonomy to a Sharing Mechanism.
The idea is to foster better co-operation between CSIRTs and law enforcers across the region, with the ultimate aim of establishing a network via which relevant topics including policy matters can be discussed.
The head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), Steven Wilson, argued that close co-operation and information sharing of this kind is the best way to ensure a safe cyberspace for businesses and consumers in the region.
“This joint workshop is intended to explore better ways of working together to collectively tackle the cyber threat,” he added, in a statement.
Europol and Enisa signed a strategic co-operation agreement back in 2014 aimed at improving knowledge and expertise exchange between the two on cybercrime.
“Sharing information is a key activity in improving approaches to cybersecurity across the EU,” argued Steven Purser, head of Enisa’s Core Operations Unit.
“However, the challenge is to link information to specific goals and to share the right information with the right people for the right purpose. Today’s workshop is a step in the right direction.”
An Enisa spokesperson told Infosecurity there was no information available on whether representatives from the UK took part in the workshop, and said "at this time we cannot comment about the future," given the country is set to leave the EU following its referendum earlier this year.
It has been suggested that Brexit could leave the UK worse off when it comes to preventing international cybercrime as law enforcers will no longer be part of the same information sharing frameworks.
However, following the referendum a CERT-UK spokesperson told Infosecurity that although it was too early to predict what might happen, “we are all agreed that information sharing is key, so no reason to think that will change.”