Electronic Soft-Identities (E-Ids) State-of-the-art and Multi-Morphed E-Ids, an Explorative Study

The scientific contribution of this report is twofold: on a side it provide a first, explorative overview of the state of the art in the world of soft-identity management systems, and on the other he present the first outcomes of a research activity aiming at proposing a solution to address trust and privacy protection issues related to identity and personal data provided by citizens in a smart environment. Our proposed solution combines identity management, trust negotiation, and usage control. The concept of identity management allows creation of less privacy sensitive soft identities derived from hard identities with high assurance. Trust negotiation techniques are used during the authentication phase to support the identity establishment process between the entities in the smart city. After the identity is established we use usage control policies to govern the exchange of identity and personal data in a privacy friendly manner.JRC.G.6 - Digital Citizen Securit

Blockchain in Energy Communities, A proof of concept

This report aims at exploring the use of the distributed ledger paradigm to incentive the participation of the citizen to a truly free, open and interoperable energy market, producing a feasibility study and a first demo testbed, taking also into consideration privacy, cybersecurity and big-data issues of the smart-home in the Energy market context. This study is intended to support point 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 of the DSM (COM(2015)192) and point 2.2 of the Energy Union package (COM(2015)80.JRC.E.3-Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

Final report of the exploratory research project, Blockchain for Transport (BC4T)

The objective of the BC4T project is to investigate possible applications of blockchain (BC) technology on road transport, focusing on topics of interest to the European Commission’s policy agenda. Pilot studies have shown that it is possible to connect entities such as vehicles, people, and authorities via BC technology while preserving data privacy in line with the General Data Protection Regulation, electronic IDentification, Authentication, and trust Services Regulation and the ePrivacy Directive. The study also showed that sharing vehicle information such as fuel consumption or emissions to a fully BC-based monitoring system would be technically feasible. Simulations also indicated that it is possible to connect a vehicle fleet of 280 million vehicles, the EC and 27 Member States via two heterogeneous BCs communicating in tandem at a pilot level. Data such as those recorded by On-board Fuel Consumption Monitoring Devices can be stored and reported via the tamper-resistant BC and could reduce administrative/cost burdens whilst facilitating compulsory monitoring of CO2 and energy consumption. Adopting a European Digital Identity could open up a range of diverse applications within the connected mobility ecosystem linking users and regulators while protecting personal data and privacy. The benefits of the adoption and testing of BC could create a significant and transparent interlinking of public and private data and enable interoperability across different transport systems.JRC.C.4 - Sustainable Transpor

Blockchain in the Energy Sector

In this report, we analyse from a technical and legislative point of view the most promising applications of Distributed Ledger Technology to the electrical energy sector, as they were selected from the previous work performed in the AA between DG ENER and DG JRC, called Enerchain. Namely these use cases are smart metering, energy communities, flexibility services, certification of origin, and electro mobility. The outcome of the analysis is a short-list of conceptual applications of DLT to various trending topics and research areas in the energy sector. In this report we also describe the related energy regulatory packages, and ICT regulatory framework and discuss our blockchain considerations.JRC.E.3 - Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

Blockchain in the Energy Sector

This report describes the technical implementations of the Administrative Agreement between DG ENER and DG JRC, called Enerchain. In particular it presents the results of the experimental tests and of the results carried out to implement workpackage 4 and and workpackage 5 as defined in the technical annex of this administrative arrangement.JRC.E.3 - Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

Feasibility study and prototyping of a blockchain-based transport-service pricing and allocation platform

This report summarizes the activity and findings of the JRC Proof of Concept Project Ridechain. The project investigated the applicability and market potential of blockchain technology for asset sharing in the road transport sector. The project comprised two principal activities. The first activity was market research and analysis to support the development of a new service concept and business model for blockchain-powered shared mobility. Specifically, the research resulted in the definition of a novel technology platform that leverages blockchain, cloud services, and in-car technology to enhance trust, streamline coordination and improve information exchange in P2P car sharing ecosystems. The second activity was technology prototyping to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the novel service concept using state of the art blockchain and IoT frameworks. These two activities provided answers to two respective research questions. First, what would be a high-value transport sector market to which a blockchain-powered technology product could offer a high-value solution? Second, how could this technology product be realized?JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor

Blockchain solutions for the energy transition, Experimental evidence and policy recommendations

This report summarises the main outcomes of several experimental studies carried out by the Joint Research Centre on blockchain solutions for energy systems. It presents considerations and recommendations for European policymakers regarding blockchain deployment across the energy value chain. The outcomes of this report come from a multi-year project funded through an explicit request of the European Parliament to the European Commission, with experiments conducted in the Joint Research Centre smart grids and cybersecurity laboratories.JRC.E.3 - Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

Blockchain Now And Tomorrow

Blockchain can enable parties with no particular trust in each other to exchange digital data on a peer-to-peer basis with fewer or no third parties or intermediaries. Data could correspond, for instance, to money, insurance policies, contracts, land titles, medical and educational records, birth and marriage certificates, buying and selling goods and services, or any transaction or asset that can be translated into a digital form. The potential of blockchain to engender wide-ranging changes in the economy, industry and society – both now and tomorrow – is currently being explored across sectors and by a variety of organisations. This report provides multidimensional insights into the state of blockchain technology by identifying ongoing and upcoming transformations in a range of sectors and setting out an anticipatory approach for further exploration. Moving beyond the hype and debunking some of its controversies, we aim to offer both an in-depth and practical understanding of blockchain and its possible applications.JRC.I.2 - Foresight, Modelling, Behavioural Insights & Design for Polic

Cybersecurity, our digital anchor

The Report ‘Cybersecurity – Our Digital Anchor’ brings together research from different disciplinary fields of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service. It provides multidimensional insights into the growth of cybersecurity over the last 40 years, identifying weaknesses in the current digital evolution and their impacts on European citizens and industry. The report also sets out the elements that potentially could be used to shape a brighter and more secure future for Europe’s digital society, taking into account the new cybersecurity challenges triggered by the COVID-19 crisis. According to some projections, cybercrime will cost the world EUR 5.5 trillion by the end of 2020, up from EUR 2.7 trillion in 2015, due in part to the exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic by cyber criminals. This figure represents the largest transfer of economic wealth in history, more profitable than the global trade in all major illegal drugs combined, putting at risk incentives for innovation and investment. Furthermore, cyber threats have moved beyond cybercrime and have become a matter of national security. The report addresses relevant issues, including: - Critical infrastructures: today, digital technologies are at the heart of all our critical infrastructures. Hence, their cybersecurity is already – and will become increasingly – a matter of critical infrastructure protection (see the cases of Estonia and Ukraine). - Magnitude of impact: the number of citizens, organisations and businesses impacted simultaneously by a single attack can be huge. - Complexity and duration of attacks: attacks are becoming more and more complex, demonstrating attackers’ enhanced planning capabilities. Moreover, attacks are often only detected post-mortem . - Computational power: the spread of malware also able to infect mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices (as in the case of Mirai botnet), hugely increases the distributed computational power of the attacks (especially in the case of denial of services (DoS)). The same phenomenon makes the eradication of an attack much more difficult. - Societal aspects: cyber threats can have a potentially massive impact on society, up to the point of undermining the trust citizens have in digital services. As such services are intertwined with our daily life, any successful cybersecurity strategy must take into consideration the human and, more generally, societal aspects. This report shows how the evolution of cybersecurity has always been determined by a type of cause-and-effect trend: the rise in new digital technologies followed by the discovery of new vulnerabilities, for which new cybersecurity measures must be identified. However, the magnitude and impacts of today's cyber attacks are now so critical that the digital society must prepare itself before attacks happen. Cybersecurity resilience along with measures to deter attacks and new ways to avoid software vulnerabilities should be enhanced, developed and supported. The ‘leitmotiv’ of this report is the need for a paradigm shift in the way cybersecurity is designed and deployed, to make it more proactive and better linked to societal needs. Given that data flows and information are the lifeblood of today’s digital society, cybersecurity is essential for ensuring that digital services work safely and securely while simultaneously guaranteeing citizens’ privacy and data protection. Thus, cybersecurity is evolving from a technological ‘option’ to a societal must. From big data to hyperconnectivity, from edge computing to the IoT, to artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and blockchain technologies, the ‘nitty-gritty’ details of cybersecurity implementation will always remain field-specific due to specific sectoral constraints. This brings with it inherent risks of a digital society with heterogeneous and inconsistent levels of security. To counteract this, we argue for a coherent, cross-sectoral and cross-societal cybersecurity strategy which can be implemented across all layers of European society. This strategy should cover not only the technological aspects but also the societal dimensions of ‘behaving in a cyber-secure way’. Consequently, the report concludes by presenting a series of possible actions instrumental to building a European digital society secure by design.JRC.T.2 - Cybersecurity and Digital Technologie