Brussels, 31/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 30 March, the European Commission proposed a new strategy to prepare Europe's response in the event of disturbances or serious attacks to its electronic communications services. Although these services provide the backbone of the European economy, they are constantly being damaged by natural disasters, terrorist attacks, malicious human action and hardware failure, such as the recent large scale attacks in Estonia, Lithuania and Georgia. Viviane Reding, the commissioner responsible for information society and media declared: “Europe must be at the forefront in engaging citizens, businesses and public administrations to tackle the challenges of improving the security and resilience of Europe's critical information infrastructures”.
The Commission believes that there is a 10%-20% probability that telecom networks will be hit by a major breakdown in the next 10 years, with a potential global economic cost of around €193bn ($250bn). The smooth functioning of communications infrastructures is vital for the European economy and society, which are increasingly underpinned by the electronic communications networks. In this context, the Commission is calling for action to protect these infrastructures by making the EU more prepared for and resistant to cyber attacks. At present, member states' approaches and capacities differ widely. The Commission also affirms that a low level of preparedness in one country can make others more vulnerable, while a lack of coordination reduces the effectiveness of countermeasures. The Commission wants all stakeholders, particularly businesses, public administrations and citizens to focus on the following issues: 1) Preparedness and prevention: fostering of cooperation, exchange of information and transfer of good policy practices between member states, and setting up a European Public-Private Partnership for Resilience. Both public and private sector actors should work together to ensure that adequate and consistent levels of preventive, detection, emergency and recovery measures are in place in all member states; 2) Detection and response: supporting the development of a European information sharing and alert system; 3) Mitigation and recovery: stimulating stronger cooperation between member states via national and multinational contingency plans and regular exercise for large-scale network security incident response and disaster recovery; 4) International cooperation: driving a Europe-wide debate to set EU priorities for the long term resilience and stability of the internet, with a view to proposing guidelines; 5) Establish criteria for European critical infrastructures in the ICT sector: criteria and approaches currently vary across EU.
The Commission is also inviting the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) to support this initiative by fostering a dialogue between all actors and the cooperation necessary at the European level. (I.L./transl.rh)