Brussels, 10/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 10 June, the European Commission announced that the EU institutions had taken an important step to counter the threat of cyber attacks against the EU institutions, bodies and agencies by setting up a Computer Emergency Response pre-configuration Team (CERT).
The ten IT experts in CERT will prevent and deal with cyber attacks, motoring the information technology systems of the European Commission, the European Parliament, the EU Council of Ministers, the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Network Security Agency (ENISA). At the end of one year's preparatory work by the team, an assessment will be made leading to a decision on the conditions for establishing a full-scale CERT for the EU institutions.
The Commission urges EU member states to follow its example and introduce their own CERTs. In the EU's Digital Agenda for Europe, the Commission pledged to introduce an EU network of national civil service cybercrime tackling teams by 2012. Neelie Kroes, EU Digital Agenda Commissioner, said; “Cyber-attacks are a very real and ever-increasing threat. Whether against individual countries, companies or most recently against the European Commission, they can paralyse key infrastructure and cause huge long-term damage.” Like many other bodies in the world, the EU has been targeted several times by serous cybercrime in recent years, most recently in March-April when European Commission IT experts detected a serious intrusion in their IT systems. In January, an attack against the EU Emissions Trading Scheme stole at least €30 million of CO2 emissions allowances from national registries, which it took three months to restore. (L.C/transl.fl)