In July 2016 the European Commission set up a new public-private cybersecurity association, forming part of a battery of new initiatives designed to enhance Europe’s protection from cyberattacks and reinforce competitiveness within its cybersecurity sector. Enter ECSO, the European Cyber Security Organization, which aims to drive cooperation between public and private stakeholders in the first stages of the research and innovation process. The idea is to give European citizens access to groundbreaking, trustworthy solutions (ICT software, services and products). One of the aspects to be taken into account when developing new solutions is the privacy of personal data, a right that really comes into its own when dealing with healthcare data.

To deal with this latter issue and address how digital technologies and the wider use of health data are changing our lives and the ways of healthcare, HIMSS Europe, the European arm of HIMSS, the world’s largest health IT membership organization, put on in Tallinn the event “'Health in the Digital Society. Digital Society for Health”. One of the participants was Julio Vivero, Head of the Security Section of GMV Secure e-Solutions in Barcelona.

His intervention, as chair of ECSO’s healthcare sub-working group, focused on explaining ECSO’s work now underway. It also examined some of the challenges that still have to be met, including all the following: the increase of cyberattacks; the ageing of Europe’s population and eHealth as a good option for providing healthcare services; cybersecurity in medical devices; the advantages that Big Data might bring to the health world, always ensuring the safeguarding of data privacy, and also how the trustworthiness of eHealth will be achieved and perceived by society only if it deals properly with aspects such as privacy, integrity and resilience of the services”.

The European Cyber Security Organization, ECSO, of which GMV is a member, is open to any participant (public/private, user/provider) authorized to take part in H2020 projects.