Last January 28^th was the Data Protection Day, which is an important reminder of the need to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction. In today’s digital age, data is a valuable asset and it is essential to ensure that it is protected against cyber threats. This includes both personal and business data, and it is the responsibility of individuals and organizations to take steps to safeguard it.

Data protection concerns on one hand individuals’ right to protection of their personal data which in return ensures the confidentiality and integrity of data processing systems and on the other the cybersecurity mechanisms that safeguard both software systems and data.  

One of the key ways to protect data is through the use of robust security measures such as encryption, firewalls, and antivirus software. Additionally, regular software updates and backups can help to mitigate the risk of data loss. Training employees on data security best practices is also crucial in preventing accidental or malicious data breaches. It is also important to regularly review and update security policies to ensure they are up-to-date and effective in protecting data. Remember that the security of data is a continuous process and one should always be vigilant and proactive in protecting it.

NEMO H2020 project envisages to realize a “Next Generation”, open and modular meta-Operating System providing for transparent IoT-to-Edge-to-Cloud continuum to increase European autonomy in data processing required by future AIoT and hyper-distributed applications. Data processing and Data protection are mutually complementary and NEMO as a European Commission’s project aims to address the core requirement of data protection.

The GDPR replaced the EU’s Data Protection Directive (DPD) from 1995 and created a consolidated data protection legal framework across all EU members. It was drafted in April 2016 and enforced in May 2018. NEMO project guarantees GDPR compliance by providing data privacy and cybersecurity by design, putting effort for the provision of guidelines and the supervision of activities that ensure that no data privacy is violated and all NEMO activities are compliant to EU Ethical and GDPR Mandate.

Moreover, NEMO project incorporates a significant set of cybersecurity and privacy protection mechanisms in every aspect of the NEMO meta-OS framework. To name few, NEMO introduces Distributed Ledger Technologies along with cybersecure Digital Twins keeping intrinsic, cryptographically defined security measures. In addition, NEMO will leverage on secure communication techniques and aggregation primitives to privately and securely combine local ML model training in a privacy preserving Federated Learning schema ensuring end-to-end secure, trusted and traceable service execution. 

Finally, the NEMO project plans to realize a Privacy, data pRotection, Ethicis, Security and Societal (PRESS) framework to closely monitor and manage data privacy concerns associated with the next generation AIoT, especially related with personalized sensing and potential privacy and ethical intervention to the human life. Furthermore, this  by-design policy-enforcement framework will be designed and developed to enforce compliance of the NEMO-hosted services to the policies defined by the service and the application providers. The defined and described policies will be multi-faced, able to cope with the different aspects of the applications life cycle (security, privacy, costs, environmental impact etc.).

In the light of the above, NEMO celebrates the Data Protection Day and looking forward to realizing an effective, efficient and secure Next-Generation meta-OS system pushing the technological boundaries of AIoT systems while at the same time providing cybersecurity by design safeguarding the privacy and data protection of the system.