GA4GH: International policies and standards for data sharing across genomic research and healthcare.

The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) aims to accelerate biomedical advances by enabling the responsible sharing of clinical and genomic data through both harmonized data aggregation and federated approaches. The decreasing cost of genomic sequencing (along with other genome-wide molecular assays) and increasing evidence of its clinical utility will soon drive the generation of sequence data from tens of millions of humans, with increasing levels of diversity. In this perspective, we present the GA4GH strategies for addressing the major challenges of this data revolution. We describe the GA4GH organization, which is fueled by the development efforts of eight Work Streams and informed by the needs of 24 Driver Projects and other key stakeholders. We present the GA4GH suite of secure, interoperable technical standards and policy frameworks and review the current status of standards, their relevance to key domains of research and clinical care, and future plans of GA4GH. Broad international participation in building, adopting, and deploying GA4GH standards and frameworks will catalyze an unprecedented effort in data sharing that will be critical to advancing genomic medicine and ensuring that all populations can access its benefits

An Implementation of a High Assurance Smart Meter Using Protected Module Architectures

Part 2: Secure Hardware SystemsInternational audienceDue to ongoing changes in the power grid towards decentralised and highly volatile energy production, smart electricity meters are required to provide fine-grained measurement and timely remote access to consumption and production data. This enables flexible tariffing and dynamic load optimisation. As the power grid forms part of the critical infrastructure of our society, increasing the resilience of the grid’s software components against failures and attacks is vitally important.In this paper we explore the use of Protected Module Architectures (PMAs) to securely implement and deploy software for smart electricity meters. Outlining security challenges and an architectural solution in the light of security features provided by PMAs, we evaluate a proof-of-concept implementation of a security-focused smart metering scenario. Our implementation is based on Sancus, an embedded PMA for low-power microcontrollers. The evaluation of our prototype provides strong indication for the feasibility of implementing a PMA-based high assurance smart meter with a very small software Trusted Computing Base, which would be suitable for security certification and formal verification

A Holistic View of Security and Privacy Issues in Smart Grids

Abstract. The energy system is undergoing a radical transformation. The coupling of the energy system with advanced information and com-munication technologies is making it possible to monitor and control in real-time generation, transport, distribution and consumption of energy. In this context, a key enabler is represented by smart meters, devices able to monitor in near real-time the consumption of energy by consumers. If, on one hand, smart meters automate the process of information flow from endpoints to energy suppliers, on the other hand, they may leak sensitive information about consumers. In this paper, we review the is-sues at stake and the research challenges that characterise smart grids from a privacy and security standpoint

The GA4GH Phenopacket schema: A computable representation of clinical data for precision medicine

Despite great strides in the development and wide acceptance of standards for exchanging structured information about genomic variants, there is no corresponding standard for exchanging phenotypic data, and this has impeded the sharing of phenotypic information for computational analysis. Here, we introduce the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Phenopacket schema, which supports exchange of computable longitudinal case-level phenotypic information for diagnosis and research of all types of disease including Mendelian and complex genetic diseases, cancer, and infectious diseases. To support translational research, diagnostics, and personalized healthcare, phenopackets are designed to be used across a comprehensive landscape of applications including biobanks, databases and registries, clinical information systems such as Electronic Health Records, genomic matchmaking, diagnostic laboratories, and computational tools. The Phenopacket schema is a freely available, community-driven standard that streamlines exchange and systematic use of phenotypic data and will facilitate sophisticated computational analysis of both clinical and genomic information to help improve our understanding of diseases and our ability to manage them

Blockchain and initial coin offerings: blockchain's implications for crowdfunding

Interest in Blockchain technology is growing rapidly and at a global scale. As scrutiny from practitioners and researchers intensifies, various industries and use cases are identified that may benefit from adopting Blockchain. In this context, peer-to-peer (P2P) funding through initial coin offerings (ICOs) is often singled out as one of the most visible and promising use cases. ICOs are novel forms of crowdfunding that collect funds in exchange for so-called Blockchain tokens. These tokens can represent any traditional form of underlying asset and have already been used, among others, to denote shares in a company, user reputations in online systems, deposits of fiat currencies, and balances in cryptocurrency systems. Importantly, ICOs allow for P2P investments without intermediaries. In this chapter, we explain the fundamentals of ICOs, highlight their differences to traditional financing, and analyze their potential impacts on crowdfunding