The German Bundestag passed the new IT Security Act in mid-June of this year. The aim of the Act is to considerably improve IT security in Germany, for example by obliging providers of "critical infrastructures" ("CI providers"), such as energy, telecommunications, or water, to maintain a minimum level of IT security. Also, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is to be notified of all IT security incidents; failure to do so will incur a heavy fine.

According to the Act, providers are to implement adequate organizational and technical "state of the art" precautions to protect their IT systems. Standards and specifications (in most cases international ones) will be useful for determining this state of the art. With its well-proven structures and processes, DIN is also expressly referred to in the Act as a national standards body and member of European and international standards organizations, and as a platform of cooperation between the State and CI providers.

"Cross-sectoral coordination and the selection of the most suitable standards for the purpose at hand is gaining importance in these times of accelerated technological convergence", explained Volker Jacumeit, Head of DIN's IT Security Coordination Office (KITS), which is supported by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). KITS' tasks include the international coordination of activities carried out by actors in industry, technical associations, the public sector, and the standards committees responsible for developing sector-specific IT security standards.

One example of the successful internationalisation of a national project is DIN SPEC 27019 "Guidance for information security management of power supply control systems based on ISO/IEC 27002 (ISO/IEC TR 27019:2014)": This DIN SPEC prepared by DIN was adopted as the International Standard ISO/IEC TR 27019.