The government pays a lot of attention to cyber security incidents, and a successful attack on the energy infrastructure would cost hundreds of times more than the cost of prevention at the level of the system, said Dragoş Roibu, Chief of Cabinet at the Ministry of Energy, at the Energy Cyber Security Forum on Wednesday.
“Within the Government, we look very carefully at cyber security incidents. We see what is happening in Ukraine. There are over a thousand daily attacks on the infrastructure in Ukraine, according to our data, and most of them are focused on the energy system. There was a discussion about costs and I remembered a story. In 1977 there was a big earthquake, we all know, and in 1978 the electricity went out for a few hours. The costs for the blackout at the national level they were higher than in the earthquake of ’77, so I don’t think we should necessarily have a cost problem. It’s a security problem and I think a successful attack on the energy infrastructure will cost hundreds times more than a system-wide prevention costs us,” explained Roibu, according to Agerpres.
Therefore, he added, the operators, together with the ministry, with the Energy Regulatory Authority, must find some options so that we rely and focus on prevention.
The ME official mentioned that the Energy Cyber Security Incident Response Center (CRISCE) to be established will mainly serve state companies, but also private companies, at their request. It is a European regulation that talks about collaboration at the level of the European Union between all member states to respond to cyber security incidents.
“CRISCE will have had the competent authority to develop the network code and be the counterpart at European level for all other CRISCEs in European Union states. It will have 34 people, which will not be enough. It will only be, if you want, a top hat. Each company, in turn, will have to do an audit, especially for the equipment they purchase and are not from Europe or Romania, but from other countries that are not so of friendly with us”, said Roibu.
Distribuție Energie Electrică Romania (DEER) organizes, between November 13-14, in Cluj Napoca, the second edition of the Energy Cybersecurity Forum, which aims to bring together national authorities, experts from the energy and IT sectors, such as and representatives of universities and the cyber security industry.
Among the main themes of the forum are the approach to cyber threats in critical infrastructures, the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors, advanced technological solutions to prevent attacks and the development of strategic partnerships at national and international level.