In this January’s issue of The Nederland’s Cyber Security Council monthly magazine, Cyber Security Read, IFIP President Leon Strous was interviewed about the increasing reliance on IT and IT workers and the need for a globally adopted professional code.

Excerpt from the original article:

“IT systems have an increasingly great influence on our life. When something goes wrong in these systems this may endanger people’s lives. IT workers doing their work well is just as important as doctors or accountants doing their work well”, according to Leon Strous, President of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the global umbrella organisation of national IT associations.

The developments in the IT sector are moving very fast. An increasing number of devices are connected with each other through the internet. Consumers and companies want to be less dependent on their own technical infrastructure. This is why the demand for services such as working in the cloud and software-as-a-service is increasing substantially. The increasing personalisation of systems is an important development. For example, wearables that measure and record data about health. Many users like to share this information.

Complex interplay
Strous: “All these developments mean that the availability, security and reliability of the systems are becoming increasingly important. At the same time we see that legislation and regulations lag behind. It is not always clear what is allowed and what is not, which (personal) data can be used and for what purpose and which IT services are so important that they have to comply with extra requirements.” According to Strous, cybersecurity involves a complex interplay of companies, authorities and other players, such as professional associations, each of which have their own responsibility. “We should hereby not only focus on large companies, but in particular also on smaller companies. Facebook also used to be a small company. When we make arrangements with each other and want to regulate matters, it is smarter to act quickly.”

 

Read the full interview of Leon Strous in Dutch and English on pages 50-51 of the Cyber Security Read, Issue: Year 2, No.2, January 2016