Project Overview

The ICT Parsifal project is a 1.5 year project that is targeting an objective concerning how to better protect Critical Financial Infrastructures (CFI), but also other information infrastructure that link CFI with other sector Critical Infrastructures (CI) in Europe. This is a long term vision and PARSIFAL works towards it by setting short-term project objectives, to be fulfilled during the project lifetime, as well as the execution of coordination actions and research road mapping that contribute to an effective and faster fulfilment of this longer-term vision.

Project Implementation

The European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP) underlines that since various sectors possess particular experience, expertise and requirements with CIP, then EPCIP will be developed on a sector-by-sector basis and implemented following an agreed list of CIP sectors. The European Critical Infrastructure Directive puts forward in an Annex a list of 11 critical infrastructure sectors, which includes the financial CI sector.

The PARSIFAL project is targeting this objective, concerning how to better protect CFI and information infrastructure that link CFI with other Critical Infrastructure in Europe. This is a long term vision and PARSIFAL is working towards it by setting short-term project objectives, to be fulfilled during the project lifetime, as well as the execution of coordination actions and research road mapping that contribute to an effective and faster fulfilment of this longer-term vision..

What makes PARSIFAL different from other initiatives is, primarily, its focus on CFI and the involvement of stakeholders from the financial sector. Secondly, PARSIFAL dedicates special attention to the relationship between the protection of Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) and trust, which is the key business requirement in the financial world. Moreover, specific technological challenges, such as the role of privacy to achieve trust in CFI, the separation of identity from financial applications, or network and service security issues (including IT security policies etc), are currently not considered and coordinated in relation to the protection of CFI.

As stated above, PARSIFAL’s goals include:
1. Bringing together CFI and Trust, Security and Dependability (TSD) research stakeholders in order to establish and nurture relationships between the financial sector stakeholders and the ICT TSD RTD communities;
2. Contributing to the understanding of CFI challenges;
3. Developing longer term visions, research roadmaps, CFI scenarios and best practice guides;
4. Co-ordinating the relevant research work, knowledge and experiences.

Project Acheivements

Refereed Academic Papers
“Challenges for the Protection of Critical ICT-Based Financial Infrastructure”, Bernhard M. Hämmerli & Henning Arendt, Information Security Solutions Europe, ISSE 2008 Securing Electronic Business Processes, pg. 319-326

Non-refereed academic papers
“PARSIFAL: Protection and Trust in Critical Financial Infrastructures”, ECN: European CIIP Newsletter, article announcing the project, Rafael Llarena Gomez, Vol.4, No. 3, December, 2008.
“The Value of Information Security to European Banking Institutions”, Deutsche Telecom study on e-banking security, Bernhard M. Hämmerli, March, 2009.

General Publicity
“Glossary of Terms related to Payment, Clearing, and Settlement Systems”, Jean Yves Gresser, February, 2009. Mr. Gresser’s ontology diagrams have also been published on the ECB website.)

PARSIFAL is coordinated by Atos Origin. For more information visit the PARSIFAL website or

contact Project Manager Jim Clarke

or Kieran Sullivan

,
or Tel: +353 51 302915
Fax: + 353 51 341100