Cybersecurity in times of COVID-19

Submitted by Veronika Muller on 10 July 2020

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinar on 8 July 2020. 

Over the years, more and more criminal organizations have moved towards the web world because they are less exposed to checks and law enforcement. Speaker Eduardo Gistau from the Spanish company Mutua MAZ noted an increase in cyberattacks during the COVID-19 crisis. In the last months, there was more remote work than usual. This meant that more credentials were exposed, as employees partly had to switch to personal devices. MAZ registered 700 attacks per day (one every 2 minutes) – nearly double the attacks of “normal” times.

Companies don't always have the time and resources to stay protected. Eduardo Gistau gave some indication on what is important to improve in order to be protected from a cyberattack and what are the main weaknesses: (i) more public-private collaboration, (ii) cyber law doesn’t cover to return the attacks, (iii) dependence from USA/Israel/China, (iv) no technological defense in Europe in case of cyber war; (v) difference in salary with USA and Japan that pushes the flight of talents and increases the skill gap.

For cybersecurity mechanisms, the European countries need to agree and act together, as web criminality does not know boarders. There is a need for a clearly communicated international governance model for cybersecurity. Ideally, the public entities establish a real-time defense support for the European companies, as time is crucial in this area.

A recording of the session is available here 

These are the complete minutes of the meeting: 

20200708 ECA dailyminutes_v2.pdf

Find information on the previous meetings hereinformation on the upcoming agenda here 

Photo by MAZ

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