Siemens signs joint charter on cybersecurity with 8 partners

Siemens and eight partners will sign the first joint charter for greater cybersecurity. Announced at the Munich Security Conference today, the Siemens-initiated Charter of Trust calls for binding rules and standards to build trust in cybersecurity and further advance digitalization. In addition to Siemens and the Munich Security Conference (MSC), the companies Airbus, Allianz, Daimler Group, IBM, NXP, SGS and Deutsche Telekom are signing the Charter. The initiative is further welcomed by Canadian foreign minister and G7 representative Chrystia Freeland as well as witnessed by Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

The Charter delineates ten action areas in cybersecurity where governments and businesses must both become active. It calls for responsibility for cybersecurity to be assumed at the highest levels of government and business, with the introduction of a dedicated ministry in governments and a chief information security officer at companies. It also calls for companies to establish mandatory, independent third-party certification for critical infrastructure and solutions – above all, where dangerous situations can arise, such as with autonomous vehicles or the robots of tomorrow, which will interact directly with humans during production processes. In the future, security and data protection functions are to be preconfigured as a part of technologies, and cybersecurity regulations are to be incorporated into free trade agreements. The Charter’s signatories also call for greater efforts to foster an understanding of cybersecurity through training and continuing education as well as international initiatives.