CybeRights : Law, regulation and policy for a better-safe cyberspace (SEcurity and RIghts in the CyberSpace (SERICS)

The more individual, economic and social life expands in the digital domain, the more we need to create a socio-political, ethical, legal and technological framework that ensures the protection of citizens and their organisations, enabling them to take advantage of the opportunities opened up by technologies without jeopardising individual interests, rights and social values.

For this reason, a holistic perspective is needed, in which the concept of ‘cybersecurity’ develops its full potential for the ‘safe’ deployment of new technologies and is based not only on the necessary perspective of identifying and suppressing harmful behaviour, but also focuses on risk prevention, through technological and organisational solutions, as well as on the development of the initiative, participation and resilience capacities of those concerned. In this sense, all policy documents indicate the need to move from a reactive (defending against) to a proactive (building of) dimension of the safe ‘space’.

The objective of this project is to establish a structure of excellence that, according to a holistic, multidisciplinary and problem-solving approach, will develop a working matrix that, starting from the problems identified, will be able to develop an action plan in which, starting from the interdisciplinary methodologies involved and the social rights and values to be promoted and protected, will be able to involve public and private stakeholders in the realisation of innovative technical and technological, legal, ethical and organisational solutions that will strengthen the resilience of the public and private sectors and, therefore, of the country system.

To this end, the CYBERIGHTS project is intended to carry out a coordinated and transversal action on all the functional areas indicated in the CyBOK that aims to train the future legal and technical experts able to establish a close dialogue with representatives of other areas of research. The aim is to create a new generation of researchers and specialists capable of integrating both legal and technological skills in their training. In order to achieve the goal of Line 7 of the Partnership (which aims at coordinating regulatory solutions with technical solutions for the creation of a secure and reliable cyberspace) CYBERIGHTS will build innovative solutions in the field of law and help expanding the legal frontiers according to innovation needs.

To this end, it is necessary to lay the concrete foundations for the encounter between a technologically sustainable and resilient law on the one hand and an ethically and normatively oriented technology on the other. In this direction, the structure, which will make use of the collaboration of private and public partners, intends to be a valuable support, both in the medium to long term implementation, of a defence strategy for the country’s critical infrastructures, and in the short term, in strengthening the capacity to foresee and cope with the risks associated with the emergence of a surveillance society.