Trust building and the European Reference Network for Critical Infrastructure Protection community

This paper discusses trust building within the European Reference Network for Critical Infrastructure Protection (ERNCIP) Project, in which a network of experts are building and promoting the first community focused specifically on European critical infrastructure protection research and practice. To this end, the paper examines the concept of trust and its many dimensions, how trust can be monitored, and how trust relates to networks of people and the technologies and mechanisms that they use to cooperate.The paper begins by providing an overview of ERNCIP and discusses trust, confidence and trust development as community building concepts. Following this, experiences related to nurturing, seeding and promoting trust while developing the ERNCIP community using a participatory and voluntary approach are detailed. The paper closes with a review of trust by design, commitment and governance and a look at the future of ERNCIP.