ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, presented a report in which published 18 protective recommendations. The report identifies the top emerging risks regarding children cyber activities and makes 18 non-technical recommendations for their mitigation.

The 'Cyber bullying & online grooming: 18 protective recommendations against key risks' report published by the European Network and Information Security Agency, ENISA, presents 18 concrete measure to mitigate risks of cyber bullying and online grooming. For instance, one key recommendation is to strengthen Member State’s law enforcement agencies. Recently, the European Parliament approved that on-line "grooming" (befriending children via the web with the intention of sexually abusing them) will also become a criminal offence.

The ENISA's new report identifies a total of 13 risks for teenagers, such as suffering serious loss of physical or mental health; irreversibly exposing important personal information online; discrimination based on your online behaviour, and misuse of personal data. For teenagers, the mitigation measures for the identified risks include, according to the report, use of specialised teenager security settings, and adaptation of existing ones to teenager needs; privacy impact assessment for applications processing teenager’s data; development of mechanisms to allow deactivation of all active (online) components; and age oriented access control mechanisms.

The Agency thus issues 18 recommendations to mitigate identified risks. Among the key recommendations are strengthening of law enforcement agencies by the Member States: additional knowledge and resources is important. This additional strength is needed to properly cover regulatory issues, statistical data collection of misuse cases, and follow up on privacy breaches. Civil society and social partners need knowledge sources regarding the use of Internet and online services. Furthermore, sponsored online campaigns to prevent grooming/cyber bullying should take place in social networks. And parents/guardians/educators need better technological skills to overcome the knowledge gap between adults and teenagers.