The mission of ARES is to advance the state of the art and the practice of information security and privacy through:

• Edge-cutting, world-class research on information security and privacy, making the latter compatible with the former
• The reinforcement of Spanish participation in the European 7th Framework Programme, specifically in the thematic programmes "Security and space" and "Information and communications technologies"
• The contribution of ARES to higher education in their activity domain by co-operating with the UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy held by the ARES co-ordinator and the doctoral programmes and Bologna master degrees in which the six groups of the team are involved
• The constitution of ARES as a national and international reference team in the domain of information security and privacy;
• The fosterage of technology transfer in information security and privacy towards industry and productive sectors, by means of contracts, agreements, patents and training.

A mid-term ambition of ARES is to become an inter-university research center excelling in information security and privacy. This change of legal status will not be operated immediately, but it is hoped that it can be accomplished within the next five years.
The activity areas of ARES include but are not limited to the following: secure electronic commerce, information privacy, critical infrastructures, intellectual property protection and digital rights management, cryptology, smart cards, personal identification and biometrics, access control and authentication, network security, security certification and trust generation, dependability, security and privacy in ubiquitous (pervasive) computing. The leitmotiv of the proposed research programme is ?National and corporate security vs individual privacy in information and communications technologies?.