The byDefault consortium is compiled by three partners from Greece, that represent three areas: regulatory, academic and software industry. Coordinator of the project is the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (HDPA), whereas the other members are the University of Piraeus Research Center (UPRC) and ICT abovo PC (ABOVO).
Hellenic Data Protection Authority (HDPA)
The HDPA is an independent public authority responsible for monitoring and enforcing the application of the data protection legislation. The Authority has the task to advise the national parliament, the government, and other institutions and bodies, to issue instructions or recommendations for the uniform application of the data protection in cases provided by the Greek Data Protection law, to conduct administrative investigations, to co-operate with the respective authorities of other member states, to handle complaints and to fulfil any other task related to the protection of personal data. The Authority has a broad range of corrective powers including the power to impose administrative fines. Also, the Authority’s mission includes promoting public awareness and understanding of the risks, rules, safeguards and rights in relation to personal data processing and promoting the awareness of controllers and processors, especially SMEs, of their obligation.
University of Piraeus Research Center (UPRC)
The University of Piraeus was founded in 1938 under the title of the “School for Industrial Studies”, by the Industrialists and Tradesmen Association. Today, one of its most prominent departments is the Department of Digital Systems, covering the areas of digital/network services, broadband (wireless and optical) networks, as well as the security of digital systems. In this context, UPRC has been the main vehicle for the involvement of the department in a significant number of EU-funded and national R&D projects, as well as projects developed in collaboration with enterprises (both international and national). As such, UPRC has close and strong collaboration with commercial, industrial and public organizations providing specialized scientific expertise and innovation to improve and enhance products and services. UPRC members are often invited by private and public bodies to evaluate the security and privacy level of their information systems.
ICT abovo is an innovation-driven company, founded in Athens in 2015, with the vision to blend research and practice towards state-of-the-art services and products exploitable by the industry as well as end-users. All of its founders have both academic and industrial background, having combined work in research, as well as commercial software engineering projects for the private and public sectors. ICT abovo know-how covers a broad spectrum of software engineering and development, whereas R&D areas include security and privacy protection, workflow management systems, middleware and distributed systems, Internet of Things, digital rights management, and semantic ontologies.
