The groundwork for digitalization’s legal path and an increasingly data-driven economy is being laid primarily in Brussels. This is particularly evident this year, with the European Commission having taken up a series of projects which will decisively Europe’s digital and data legal framework over the next decade.

As the Hannover Trade Fair 2021 has demonstrated, Internet-based solutions are gaining relevance and momentum in German industry. This means that increasing swathes of data are being generated by European companies, organisations and administrations. In the coming years, Gaia-X will help to maintain complete control over this data on a long-term basis and enable independent decisions to be made on who has access to it.

For more than a year now, digital technologies and applications have been supporting the economy and society in times of the Corona crisis and have gained great acceptance among the population, according to the results of a representative survey commissioned by eco - Association of the Internet Industry, undertaken in April by the marketing and opinion research institute Civey.

For 25 years, the Complaints Office of eco – Association of the Internet Industry has been successfully combatting illegal content on the Internet. The 2020 report presented online today shows that the independent hotline is making a significant contribution to the take-down and criminal investigation of illegal content: With a total of 5,523 cases, the number of justified complaints displaying a clear violation of the law was higher in 2020 than ever before.

In many different spheres, Digital Germany has made great strides, especially during the Corona pandemic. But where do we currently stand and what still needs to be addressed in terms of sustainable digitalisation, digital sovereignty & education or IT security? In the run-up to the 2021 German federal election, we present various Internet industry and digital policy perspectives. In the current interview: Inger Paus, Managing Director of the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communication in Germany.

Since its foundation in 2019, MEN@NET GmbH has specialised in network and performance analyses of the data networks of data centres. In a short interview, Thilo Hospe, Head of Sales and Business Development Manager at MEN@NET GmbH, reveals more about the company, how it is dealing with current challenges, and his expectations of eco.

With advancing digitalisation, the global demand for computing power is increasing, and with it the energy requirements for data centres. But the strong data centre infrastructure also means an opportunity for future energy concepts, especially in conurbations like Frankfurt am Main.

eco – Association of the Internet Industry & ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers invite you to a joint ICANN70 Readout to summarise and discuss selected topics from the Virtual Community Forum. Speakers from different constituencies of the ICANN community will provide an overview of the highlights...

 DoH improves the privacy and security of users eco Discussion Paper on DoH explains complexities and provides recommendations Paper – first published in September 2020 – now available in Spanish Throughout the history of the Internet, traditional DNS traffic – for example, when a user types a website name...

In November 2019, with the goal of revolutionising stationary retail through the Internet of Things, Oliver Vosshenrich founded neoalto GmbH alongside Rene Bredlau. In a short interview, Vosshenrich reveals more about the company, how it is dealing with current challenges, and his expectations of eco.

Protecting users, data, devices, and privacy through legal frameworks, technological innovations, and security by design.

Sustainability experts from all over the world will present ideas and solutions for a more climate-friendly digitalisation with reduced energy consumption on the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) virtual “clean-IT Forum”.

A study published this month by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology shows that digital resilience in Cologne is high, but varies greatly across sectors. Supply chains, for example, are described by 82 percent of decision-makers as being efficient even in the pandemic.

Scaleuplab is a leading consultancy for startups and scale-ups in Germany and a member company of the eco Association. In a short interview, Sebastian Janus reveals more about the company, how it is dealing with current challenges, and highlights his expectations of the eco membership.

In the amendment of the German Telecommunications Act (TKG), the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) is calling for last-minute modifications, with these set to have far-reaching consequences for all Internet users. In eco’s view, such a regulation would lead to a further undermining of the trustworthiness and integrity of communication on the Internet.

Users of cloud services and digital ecosystems such as GAIA-X expect maximum data availability. The data centre business is a matter of trust, and that starts in Europe's data centres. Standards and certificates such as EN50600 and the Data Center Star Audit stand for security and availability of data, says eco data center expert Gerd Simon in interview.

Promoting women in tech should not be about fixing women – it means fixing structures in a way that will benefit everyone, reports Lucia Falkenberg from eco.

An interview with Volker Greimann of Key-Systems on the recent recent German Federal High Court of Justice (BGH) judgement on ‘Stoererhaftung’ (Interference Liability).

Against the backdrop of the attacks against email servers that have recently been reported, eco – Association of the Internet Industry recommends that companies put their own emergency planning and patch management to the test. According to the eco IT Security Study 2021, published in English today, 88 percent of the companies surveyed by eco describe patch management as a very important topic in their security strategy.

“As a digital association, the promotion of women and diversity is a key issue for eco in order to ensure the future viability of Germany as a digital location,” says Oliver Süme, Chair of the eco Association.

The German Bundestag will vote on the Passenger Transportation Act next Friday. eco urges policy-makers to not miss out on the opportunity for modern, climate-friendly mobility: With the Passenger Transportation Act’s planned return obligation and pre-order deadlines for rental cars, new inequities will be created for providers.

qbee AS helps customers to easily digitalise in the field of Industry 4.0 – with smart management and remote maintenance software for embedded Linux devices. In a short interview, Carsten Lehbrink, General Manager at qbee, reveals more about the Norwegian company, current challenges in the industry, and his expectations of eco.

With the call for unique and secure digital identities getting louder, Ekkehart Gerlach, Managing Director of the German ICT + Media Academy, predicts an increasing use of an ID card for the Internet, and reports on its many potential benefits.

“Politicians must pull the ripcord in order not to gamble away trust in digital communication,” says eco’s Vice-Chair Klaus Landefeld.

With an online event on 8 March 2021, Salesforce and eco #LiT – Ladies in Tech celebrated International Women’s Day and the 1st anniversary of Salesforce’s “Bring Women Back to Work” programme. In advance of the event, we spoke with Petra Jenner of Salesforce about career opportunities for women in the tech industry and what tech companies can do to attract and retain more women.

The current draft of the BND Act by the German Federal Chancellery is set to give the German Federal Intelligence Service permission to access inventory, traffic and content data without the knowledge of the operator in question. The eco Association warns of the consequences of such a regulation for general IT security and judges the draft as being unconstitutional.

In this workshop we will show how the DNS Loadbalancer PowerDNS "dnsdist" can be used to extend any existing DNS resolver (BIND 9, Unbound, PowerDNS Recursor, Microsoft DNS etc.) with DoH and DoT. Existing DNS security mechanisms such as Response Policy Zones will be preserved.

An interview with Andreas Ocklenburg, CEO at cloudSME UG

The eco Association criticises procedure and warns against hasty decision in the Bundesrat – Password disclosure means profound invasion of privacy

Security of services, products and networks is taking on an increasingly important role in the digital sphere. The first EU-wide law on cybersecurity, the NIS Directive, came into force in 2016 and helped achieve a higher and more even level of security of network and information systems across the EU. With the recently...