SAPEA experts participated in the work on this topic leading to the Opinion, which was delivered to the Commission in March 2017, in response to a request for scientific advice from the College of European Commissioners, led by European Commission Vice President, Commissioner Ansip (Commissioner for Digital Single Market) and Commissioner Oettinger (Commissioner for Budget & Human Resources).
On 13 September 2017 the European Commission presented to the European Parliament and to the European Council its communication paper: Resilience, Deterrence and Defence: Building strong cybersecurity for the EU.
The Cybersecurity Communication makes a number of references to the SAM HLG Opinion, including "duty of care", reducing vulnerabilities, fast repair, testing, verification and long term maintenance (p. 5 -6), barriers to sharing of information on cyber incidents between public and private sectors and issues of trust (p.7), protecting fundamental rights such as freedom of expression as well as personal data and strong encryption (p. 9 -10).
The Communication states that "The approach [set out in this joint Communication] is also substantiated by independent scientific advice provided by the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism High Level Group of scientific advisors”
