IPaCSO focuses on two particular topics, Cyber Security and Privacy. The relevance for both topics in 2012 - 2013 was obvious : both had already been identified providing a series of real world challenges in Europe and the rest of the world, whilst at the same time providing sufficient grounds for new innovations and being a high growth market potential. 

The area of cyber security and privacy is very broad, including categories such as attacks on devices,denial
of service, critical infrastructure attacks, socialnetwork and privacy attacks, web attacks, systems/network
and services/cloud level attacks. This is not an exhaustive list but does represent the main prioritised areas
that keep appearing in the academic and industrial arena. Advances in Information Communication
Technologies, social networks, and new practices such as behavioural profiling, web and location tracking
are posing many challenges to various end users andare also providing motivation and pressure to reform the
data protection legal framework in Europe. There isa growing concern and need to gain a better
understanding of end users data disclosure and the trade off with respect to monetising personal information
by disclosure or non-disclosure to a service provider. Importance must also be placed on developing greater
levels of understanding of the economic dimension of PACS. 

Whilst focusing on both domains, it is clear that both might be topics in transit. The IPaCSO project intends to apply some of the expected project outcomes to the wider ICT Security industry domain and broader Trustworthy ICT landscape. 

The cyber security and privacy issues are here to stay in one form or another. How we maximise the impact  of current research activities in this space to produce innovative products to target such challenges,must gain more focus. The PACS market domain shows significant promise of tangible market impact opportunities, but various complex regulations, policy perspectives and business challenges pose multiple market adoption obstacles and barriers limiting innovation in this space. Having the IPaCSO Innovation Framework that can be embraced by existing organisations and relevant stakeholders will enable and increase exploitable opportunities and increased economic impact.

Similarly, there is a latent need to have a coordinated approach to the a development of an innovation framework for Privacy and Cyber Security innovations, allowing it to support innovative activities throughout Europe on a similar basis.