Romania has a national cybersecurity strategy in place that very clearly outlines its goal of becoming one of the most relevant actors in the region in this field, and we want to play a major role and make our voice heard, general director of the National Cyber Security Directorate (DNSC) Dan Cimpean declared on Tuesday at the Bucharest Cybersecurity Conference 2024.

"We want to be one of the most relevant players in this region. I think we are already delivering as a country, as an ecosystem, and that's what our whole plan is about. We have a national cybersecurity strategy that outlines these goals in a very clear manner. So I can assure you that not just the Directorate, but practically all of our institutional partners, our entire business ecosystem, the academia, we are all making efforts to ensure that we get the desired recognition. We will probably never be the best at global level, because after all, we are a medium-sized country, but we want to sit at the table of the big boys. We want to be one of the relevant players and particularly on the eastern flank of the EU and NATO, we definitely want to play a role and make our voice heard," Cimpean told the conference.

His message to IT managers and professionals was to be prepared for the eventuality of a cyber attack and reiterated that the "cyber machine" is not a profit center, but it costs much less than "cleaning up" after a major incident.

"When it comes to costs, we always encounter this reaction: cyber defence people want expensive training and equipment and tools and drills and it costs us a lot of money, and it's true that the cybersecurity apparatus is a center of cost almost everywhere, it's not a profit center, but it costs much less than cleaning up after a major incident," Cimpean explained.

The DNSC head emphasized that almost every major cyber attack the institution has faced in recent years has come along with manipulation, propaganda, fake news, and that AI and a number of other deception tools are increasingly at play, making it easier for attackers to get what they want.

"We all receive those spam and phishing emails and so on; they get better and better, they get more believable, they almost seem real. And to give you one of my favorite examples, my team played me a video of me speaking in Turkish, Chinese, Greek, and German, languages I don't know, and I couldn't believe my eyes. I spoke perfect German, which is not my thing and this is a bit scary, I have to say, but the solutions are there, we have to learn faster and better and be quick to react to these threats," Dan Cimpean said.

He also stated that Romanian authorities have adopted many laws and regulatory acts, and many more will follow, such as the transposition of the NIS 2 Directive, for which almost all approvals have been obtained.

"The regulatory framework is super, super important, that's for sure. But regulation will always be one step behind technology, because the technology comes and produces impacts and effects, things happen, and then you have to regulate somehow. So it's not that easy, (...) we need many more minds, more dialogue and discussions in order to do things right. And in the specific case of the NIS 2 Directive, it took months and months and thousands of hours of work on the part of dozens of organizations to develop it properly," the DNSC director pointed out.

National and international cybersecurity experts from the private, public and academic sectors attend October 29 - 31 the Bucharest Cybersecurity Conference 2024, one of the largest dedicated events in Romania.

The purpose of the conference is to explore how the European Union secures its digital future in the face of current threats, including cyber and hybrid ones, in a global context marked by constantly evolving risks.

BCC2024 is an international conference organized by DNSC with the support of the National Coordination Center (NCC-RO) and the National Association for Information Systems Security (ANSSI), in cooperation with the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC). AGERPRES (RO - author: Nicoleta Gherasi, editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - editor: Simona Klodnischi)