Abstract

The European security landscape has changed in the past years and especially following the war in 2022. Today, knowledge security is one of the prominent topics in higher education and research in Europe. The freedom to conduct research and make research results available is essential to academic achievements. At the same time universities want to comply with national and European laws and regulations in protecting and preventing knowledge and unauthorized results from being exported. Knowledge security measures is about preventing the transfer of sensitive knowledge and technologies to certain countries or “state actors” that affects national security (e.g the security of Europe) making the widely practice of international exchange stricter and subject to risk assessment associated with this exchange.
Universities in Germany, The Netherlands, and other European countries, started to tackle “knowledge security” through internal measures and procedures. Though Europe is expected to have more streamlined approaches, EU countries handle this differently. In Norway the regulation of Export Control entered into force in 1984, but special attention was brought to the matter following some incidents of suspicious practice by some individuals. Hence, in 2020 some Norwegian universities were obligated to set up measures and restrictions to become more responsible for international cooperation. NTNU and the Faculty of Engineering have always recruited internationally, and we have long traditions of collaboration with various universities from around the world in research, education, and staff/student exchange. Without internationalization and mobility, it is impossible for a small and far away country such as Norway to keep a fresh outlook on research topics and conduct research at a world-class level. We were in urgent need for a set of best practices to ensure we could continue recruiting excellent researchers, excellence based on their scientific achievements, disregarding their nationality. The Faculty of Engineering took the initiative to develop guidelines for how to assess candidates’ eligibility based on the nature of the research domain in order to manage the reinforced restrictions, thereby avoiding the rejection of possibly very good candidates merely by nationality. By implementing good internal guidance and “knowledge security assessments” to evaluate each research project when employing new staff from countries outside the EU/NATO, the Faculty was able to ensure a transparent process and achieve its strategic goals. Having well established guidance, framework and policies on security knowledge allowed the Norwegian universities such as NTNU to continue the international collaboration and maintain its leading position in science and education.