Given the country’s location in an area of instability, in 2014, the number of cyber attack threats in Romania rose by a dramatic 80% compared with 2013.
Every day, Romania comes under hackers' attacks, their target being public institutions, private and state-owned companies, banks and even the website of the Orthodox Patriarchy, says Augustin Jianu, a director with the Cyber Security Incident Response Centre CERT-RO, which is an independent analysis, research and development body in the field of cyber infrastructure protection. Despite measures taken to counteract cyber attacks, vulnerability is still high. Merely sending an email or posting something on a social network provides personal information that can be used by hackers. Augustin Jianu explains:
"The moment a work station, a computer or several devices in a network are infected or compromised they become part of hot-net-type networks and are used by hackers to launch further attacks on other infrastructures, without the owners of those devices or work stations being aware of this. To give you a light-hearted example, it's possible that someone's intelligent fridge connected to the home network may be sending thousands, hundreds of thousands of spam messages a day and the owner of the fridge not to even be aware of this."
According to the official CERT-RO report, 54% of the alert threats received were about poorly configured, insecure or vulnerable information systems, while 24% of the total number of unique IPs allocated in Romania were involved in at least one case of cyber security alert in 2013, up by 16%. The attacks on the Romanian cyber security space targeted almost all areas of economic and social life and even the administration, says the president of the Study Centre for Security, Crisis Management and Conflict Prevention in Bucharest, Alexandru Groseanu:
"Some 44 million cyber attacks were reported in 2013 and over 78 million in 2014. I believe that it is because of the security balance being disrupted and the confrontation with our big neighbour in the east that the number of cyber threats and attacks has increased. Most attacks have been rejected and are correctly managed. Obviously, most attacks target the administration, but also businesses and databases. In spite of this, the institutions active in the field of cyber protection are doing their job very well and consequently no major incidents have been registered."
Alexandru Groseanu recalls that Romania has committed itself to providing cyber protection for Ukraine and believes that Bucharest can become a provider of cyber security in the region, especially in the current geopolitical context, in which cyber attacks are on the rise. Alexandru Groseanu:
"If we talk about the number of active IPs, the number of active Romanian websites, which is how we define the cyber space, we can see it is on the increase. It's true that between 2013 and 2014 the number of IPs decreased, but the content of the cyber space, in terms of the number of databases, has expanded, and in this respect the cyber space is constantly expanding. Obviously, the number of cyber attacks in an ever expanding cyber space is likely to increase. If we look at the geopolitical and geo-strategic context, I find it hard to believe that a security balance can be achieved in the near future, let's say within the next 6 to 12 months. "
Figures are worrying. If around 30,000 cyber attacks were reported daily some years ago, their number now exceeds 390,000. Cyber security experts say protection must start with people's personal computers and other devices that use the Internet. They must be protected with antivirus, antifishing and anti-spyware programmes. Intelligent phones and all other Internet connected devices that a family has must be protected in the cyber space. The number of terminals connected to the internet varies from 10 to 55 per household, and more than half of them are poorly protected or have no protection at all, says Florin Talpes, the founder and executive manager of Bit Defender, a Romanian company with an international reputation in the area of anti-virus technology. The company has launched Bit Defender Box, a product designed to protect family devices and expects a lot of demand for this product to come from the USA, Germany and Japan, which are the most developed markets in this respect. Florin Talpes:
"Any device owned by a family and connected to the Internet, whether it's a computer, a smartphone, a smart TV or a game console, faces the threat of cyber attacks, some of which can be extremely damaging. Someone may hack into your TV and, without you knowing it, may watch everything you do at home, or someone may simply get hold of your bank account data from your computer."
According to Florin Talpes, the world is faced with new types of cyber attacks every day.
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