TIRANA, April 4 /ATA/ Deputy Prime Minister, also Minister of Infrastructure and Energy, Belinda Balluku participated in the roundtable on the Simulation of the Management of a Cyber Crisis. In her remarks, she emphasized that “the Albanian government has made cyber security a priority by allocating dedicated budgets for the development of cyber defenses, which include all the steps to be taken in the future.”
In her remarks, Balluku stressed that “the digitization of services, the digitization of state administration processes, is associated with increased exposure to cyber attacks. July 2022 showed us how a well-orchestrated attack by malicious actors can disrupt the systems of a country, which has decided today to digitize a very large part of services with about 90% of them going online.”
“We immediately detected the problems, of course with the support of our partners as they were the ones who guided us in those troubled times for us, I would say chaotic days in the summer of 2022, and of course together with our partners we managed to design a genuine program, a “road map”, which must be implemented with precision to achieve a satisfactory level of cyber security, as befits a European country, as befits a member of NATO”, said Balluku.
Balluku said that ” meanwhile it was tough convincing other partners, such as the private sector. We had to put a lot of work in this regard, and I want to thank all the bank representatives who are here today and have started to perform at another level, but you have to be upfront with each other. It was necessary for me to sit at the table with the managers of the banks so that we could explain how important it was to have an interaction.”
“If the administration and the Albanian government had invested in this direction and private business had stayed out of all this, it would have one down the drain. Cyber security is an element that must be acquired by each of us, not only at the business level, at the level of public administration, but also at the personal level.”
Even our children, Balluku said, are susceptible to cyber attacks, even the young people, and all those young men and women who are investing in technology today, as it is the future and this cannot be denied.
“All the exposure of today’s young men and women or even businesses to artificial intelligence and to everything else will develop in the future, requires an upgraded cyber security that should start from the education of the younger generations, but also of the elderly, as it is an emerging sector, it is a new field, we are all getting familiar with it little by little, up to the highest levels of government, independent institutions and private business obviously or critical infrastructure such as the banks or even those critical infrastructures that are managed by the Albanian state, such as energy, transport and everything else”, said Balluku.
Balluku went on saying that “the well defined legal framework allows all actors to be clear about their roles, but what is more important and what I would ask you today would be to facilitate the work of ACESK as much as we can, ” said Balluku.
