The European Union's (EU's) IT security agency is calling on the expertise of leading professionals and academics to help secure member states from future internet attacks.

The European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa) has appointed 30 experts to its Permanent Stakeholders Group (PSG), including six members from the UK, to help plan how to monitor and promote security best practice.

Experts from the Department of Trade & Industry, IBM, BP, BT and Computer Associates, among others, will meet at the PSG's inaugural meeting in Brussels on 28 February.

The meeting will discuss ways of reducing IT security threats to the EU's critical national infrastructure, which includes the banking and transport industries and utilities that are increasingly dependent on the internet.

Enisa executive director Andrea Pirotti told the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in Prague last week: 'The PSG will advise me as executive director and assist in drawing up the Enisa work programme, as well as facilitating the information flow between relevant stakeholders in Europe and Enisa.'

BP chief information security officer and Enisa PSG member Paul Dorey told Computing he will help direct the organisation's programme towards solving practical security problems faced in day-to-day business.

'Security is only as strong as its weakest link,' he said. 'In the single market of the EU we need a way for business security to transcend national security concerns and produce a consistent trusted environment for digital commerce.'

Simon Perry, vice president and security strategist at Computer Associates, says it will be important for the group to establish ways to monitor and protect systems EU-wide, and encourage ascension states to introduce best practice in security.

'Critical national infrastructure was seen as things such as nuclear power plants before 11 September 2001,' he said. 'But since then it's grown to include other systems such as banking and transport, and everyone needs to play a part in protecting it.'

The EC has this week launched a Euro15m European Security Research Programme to protect citizens from potential threats, such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The programme will investigate rapid response systems and new technologies to guard national borders and critical network infrastructure.