Together with another 11 international companies and organisations, CaixaBank has initiated a new benchmark project focusing on the protection of privacy and personal data as outlined within the framework of the Horizon 2020 programme, funded by the European Union.
Together with Tenforce, Deutsche Telekom, Technische Universität Berlín, Athens Technology Center, Ipsos, Kaspersky, Vlaamse overheid, Cini, ULD, Institute Mihailo Pupin and E seniors, CaixaBank has launched the research consortium TRAPEZE (Transparency, Privacy and Security for European Citizens), with the goal of developing new tools that facilitate the administration and protection of citizens' data security and privacy.
More specifically, TRAPEZE will work to create a platform to register user consent for the use of their data and adjust user policies in real time, and in a fully transparent way for the end user, in response to changing circumstances.
For CaixaBank, its customers' security and protection is paramount. The entity has a team of professionals specialised in cybersecurity, working to combat threats from cyber attackers. The company seeks to protect the operations and financial transactions of customers and shareholders to ensure that they take place in the most secure environment possible, preventing external threats that can jeopardise confidentiality and privacy.
CaixaBank, the most active European bank in R&D linked to Horizon 2020
CaixaBank has formed part of a total of five international research consortia in the framework of Horizon 2020, the European Union's largest research and innovation programme, with almost €80 billion of available funding over seven years (2014-2020).
The bank, chaired by Jordi Gual and led by Gonzalo Gortázar, has received the most funding among European banks within the H2020 European Commission programme for research and innovation, being assigned a total of €1.5 million.
Besides TRAPEZE, CaixaBank is currently participating in the consortia ENSURESEC, CONCORDIA and I-BiDaaS and it was part of EU-SEC, which was completed last year. All of these projects share the philosophy of bringing research and innovation closer to the business environment in a framework of international collaboration featuring different organisations from European countries.
The goal of the ENSURESEC project is to develop a solution to protect e-commerce transactions against physical and cyber threats. CaixaBank is participating in this project together with another 21 international companies and organisations. This programme, launched in 2020, is expected to last for two years. During this period, the member companies will design different tools to guarantee e-commerce security, protect transactions and enable constant monitoring and a real-time response.
CaixaBank is also part of the CONCORDIA consortium, which tackles the current fragmentation with regards to cybersecurity at the European level, through the creation of a pan-European cybersecurity centre grouping various benchmarking entities in this area. This project was launched in January 2019 and is planned to be completed in December 2022.
Furthermore, in 2018 I-BiDaaS was launched, a project which will be completed by 2020 and which is focused on the development of a platform to facilitate the use of big data technologies by end users, reducing costs and preserving the security and privacy of in-cloud data. CaixaBank, in addition to other companies, is carrying out a pilot project to demonstrate the platform's benefits, which makes use of the advanced computer science expertise of the project's members, such as Barcelona Supercomputing Center and IBM Research Haifa.
Lastly, together with eight European institutions and companies, the entity has developed the EU-SEC (European Security Certification Framework). The project focused on creating a European framework for the ongoing certification of security in cloud environments.