Computer experts to exchange experiences and information - T-Online to provide the population with information in the event of disasters The Federal Minister of the Interior, Otto Schily, and the Chairman of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management, Dr. Ron Sommer, today announced in Berlin that they will establish a security partnership. Deutsche Telekom and the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI - German Information Security Agency), which reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), will work together on steadily raising security standards in the transmission networks. The aim of the agreed measures is to ensure the best possible protection of electronic communications against espionage and hacking.
Sommer and Schily agree that the protection of infor-mation, which has now become the fourth production factor in the economy, is of particular importance. "The information and communications networks of a country are amongst the most important nerve fibers of modern societies. That is why we need to be particularly concerned about the reliable protection of these networks. The Federal Government is working constructively on this with trade and industry", said Schily. "The Berlin-Bonn Information Network (IVBB) is proof of particularly successful cooperation between the government and Deutsche Telekom. This network guarantees secure and modern government communications", is how Schily emphasized the excellent cooperation with Deutsche Telekom.
Sommer pointed to the opportunities that lie in improved security in telecommunications applications: "Security is a basic necessity, and that goes for telecommunications services as well. To a large extent, we already meet this need in our networks. Higher security standards will further increase the acceptance and user intensity of electronic services, for example in the area of e-commerce. They will also open up a wealth of new application possibilities - for instance in the areas of e-learning, e-health or - of key importance - e-government. This will further strengthen the importance of Germany as a business location in the information age."
Schily and Sommer both emphasized the importance of security when using new media in trade and industry and administration in order to increase competitiveness and ease of use for the public. However, both stated unanimously that IT security was not just the responsibility of the providers, who already make solutions available, and of politicians, who have already created the legal framework for electronic commerce. Increasingly it is now up to the users to take up these challenges and also make use of the options available.
The parties agreed on close cooperation between their computer experts, who look after Internet and intranet security in so-called CERTs (Computer Emergency Response Teams). This cooperation is to be extended to all sectors of industry in order to be able to combat the spread of computer viruses more effectively through the fast exchange of information and experiences between experts.
In addition, there are plans to provide the population with information in the event of a disaster via up-to-date media such as the Internet. To this end, a cooperation between the BMI and T-Online was agreed. Aside from being alerted in the event of an emergency and disaster via radio and television, the population is to be informed in future via the information portal www.t-online.de.
The prerequisite for versatile security functions and applications such as the digital signature is encryption - so-called cryptography. Deutsche Telekom has been focusing on this subject since the end of the 1980s. It set up a Trust Center back in 1994, which became the first in Germany to receive official approval from the Certification Office of the Regulatory Authority in 1999 as defined by the Signature Act and is thus entitled to issue digital signatures.