Strengthening information security to protect against fake news

Online disinformation, also refered to as “fake news”, has recently received a lot of attention as a potential disruptor of democratic processes globally. There is a need to initiate a dialogue in the EU around the possible responses to this phenomenon.

In this regard, ENISA publishes an opinion paper meant to present some views and recommendations on the problem of online disinformation in the EU from a Network and Information Security (NIS) perspective.

Artificial intelligence, reputation reporting, and transparency

The use of AI algorithms should be deployed to assist in the detection of online disinformation campaigns and misuse of online platforms such as scraping, spam, etc. The outputs of these algorithms should be verified by humans before any action is taken.

Online platforms should consider deploying the results from their disinformation analysis and reporting in a transparent manner to build a confidence score on the content, which is presented to the end-user. This approach should build confidence for end-users in analysing the content presented.

Source verification and fact checking

Online media operators should develop signatures that could be included in their news articles, where users can verify the source of the content.

Online reporting options

Online platforms should clearly identify reporting locations for the ordinary user to report suspected online disinformation. The reports should be examined in a timely manner by the operators to decide on the appropriate action. The operator should have the necessary resources in place to address the challenge arising from this activity.

Economic disincentives

A strategy should be developed to create economic disincentives, which could include the cutting off of advertising for sites that are found to be involved in the dissemination of online disinformation.