How to keep data secure in a cyber world

Press release issued: 30 October 2013

Cyber security experts from the University of Bristol have advised the European Union's Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) on how to protect the personal data of millions of citizens.

The Algorithm and Key Size Report is a major new report from the cyber security agency to give recommendations on guarding against the increasing threat from cyber attack.

Edited by Professor Nigel Smart, Professor of Cryptology at Bristol University, the report gives guidance to member states, other organizations and the wider community about current best scientific practice in the rapidly advancing field of cryptography.

Protective measures included how to encrypt data to keep it secure and how to create a digital signature in order to be able to authenticate someone.

The report, which also had input from Dr Gaven Watson and Dr Bogdan Warinschi from the Department of Computer Science, builds on an earlier report which was written as part of the ECRYPT Network of Excellence consortium funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The new ENISA report is aimed at providing more concrete recommendations and has a much wider coverage of methods available than the prior ECRYPT report.

Professor Smart said: "It was a pleasure to be involved in the writing of this report. It builds on our earlier work on the ECRYPT report of a similar nature, and we hope it will be as useful to designers and implementers of systems as the ECRYPT one was."