Brussels, 08/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - At the Middle East Rail Conference in Dubai on Tuesday 7 March, Henrik Hololei, director general, DG Mobility and Transport, said that security in data handling is the main challenge facing the rail sector in the future.
Data, he said, bring great added value to network management and information to passengers. Intelligent mobility will become the “backbone of transport”, he prophesied. It comes as no surprise that this position is very much in line with that of Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc (see EUROPE 11480).
However, he went on, efforts must focus on cybersecurity to ensure that the network is secure, private data are protected “in order to win the public's confidence” - since the public is the basic source of data, he noted - and hackers are countered. Physical terrorism could very well give way to cyber-terrorism, he suggested.
On the subject of terrorism, and in reference to the failed attack on a Thalys train in August of last year (see EUROPE 11407 and 11373), Hololei stressed that the response form the European Commission must remain proportionate in order maintain passenger flows. The Commission is currently carrying out a study on rail security, due to be published in August of this year.
Landsec, the comitology group comprising national experts in land transport security, discussed cybersecurity at its last meeting on 25 January. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)