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23 - 24 September 2020: The Second Year of the Prague 5G Security Conference
The second Prague 5G Security Conference will take place on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 September 2020. Due to the epidemic situation, it will take place virtually. The opening and closing of the conference are open to the public and the media.
The conference will be opened by Karel Řehka, Director of the National Cyber ​​and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB) who will welcome the participants as the representative of the main organizing institution. The introductory speech will be given by the Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, under whose auspices the conference is conducted. United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Australian Home Secretary Peter Dutton and European Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová will also address the audience in their opening statements.
The conference will be a two-day event and will cover a wide range of topics, from specific national regulatory steps in the past year, through 5G research and development to supply chain security assessments. The conference will end on Thursday with the closing remarks of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Tomáš Petříček and subsequently by the Director of NÚKIB Karel Řehka.
The Prague 5G Security Conference is the world's leading forum for discussing the risks associated with the roll-out of 5G infrastructure. Last year's conference was concluded with the publication of the so-called Prague Proposals, which summarized the basic recommendations for the secure launch of the 5th generation mobile networks.
More than 1,100 participants are invited to this year's conference, including representatives of governments, research institutions and major operators. Over 50 speakers from various fields related to 5G will take the floor during the conference.
The European Commission Warns of Dependence on Risky 5G Technology Providers
Today, EU member states and the European Commission issued their preliminary report about fulfilling the so-called EU 5G toolbox. This is a set of tools representing a common approach by EU member states to securing future 5G networks specifically founded on the objective evaluation of risks associated with the coming of 5G networks and adequate measures with the goal of reducing these risks. According to the Commission, all member states took specific steps to raise the level of security, which demonstrates their willingness to move forward in a coordinated way on a pan-EU level while also stating it is necessary to immediately begin reducing the risks of dependence on a single vendor and to accelerate the setting of processes for screening direct foreign investments.
The EU 5G toolbox was published at the end of January and shows the agreement among the member states with the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) on the need for building secure 5G networks. Individual measures within this document are based on, for example, creating risk profiles of individual technology suppliers and the creation of specific measures that will prevent the participation of suppliers that are deemed to be highly risky. Another significant risk the toolbox identifies is being dependent on a single supplier. The specific form and speed of the measures are implemented is the responsibility of the individual member states.
The current report maps the advances the individual member states have made in adopting the necessary measures. The main advances came in increasing the powers of the national regulators so they can better assure the cybersecurity of 5G networks. The Commission sees similar advances in measures that will limit infrastructure suppliers' access based on their risk profiles. Contrarily, more must be done to mitigate risks from a single supplier or in setting foreign direct investment screenings.
"From my point of view, it's key that the European Commission is supporting an identical approach to what the Czech Republic has backed for some time. That means an approach based on risk evaluation while also advancing the implementation of the EU 5G toolbox as a clear signal of the efforts behind an EU-wide solution that the Czech Republic is also working towards," NÚKIB Director Karel Řehka said of the European Commission's report.
The Czech Republic is also not lagging behind in another area listed in the EU 5G toolbox: screening foreign direct investments, the oversight of which is the responsibility of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. "The ministry is intensively working on implementing a national mechanism for screening foreign direct investments. It has created a bill on its implementation that has already passed the first parliamentary reading. The legislative process will continue at the beginning of September. We are also working on joining a system of European cooperation in this field that will formally begin in October this year," deputy head of the European Union and Foreign Trade Department at the Ministry of Industry and Trade Martina Tauberová said.
The toolbox is a fundamental EU document about 5G network security. The Czech Republic and France took the dominant role in preparing it. "Together with our colleagues within the French Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d'information (ANSSI), we had the chief role in preparing the toolbox. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was thanks to the Czech Republic that the risk evaluation of technology suppliers for 5G networks including non-technical parameters, such as trust in the particular supplier, got into the final document," said Czech Cyber Attaché at the National Cyber and Information Security Agency Lukáš Pimper, who was responsible for this process in Brussels.
In the conclusion to the report, the Commission also emphasizes that assuring the resilience of 5G networks is absolutely necessary for our society as this technology will have an influence on electronic communication and other important sectors, such as energy, transportation, finance, and healthcare. It will also allow for greater automation of industry than is possible today.
Celá zpráva 2020-11-30
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