Alecu (CERT-RO): We thought of a working document to strengthen collaboration between state, private and educational areas

Collaboration between the state, the private environment and the educational area is very important, which is why we thought, with the help of the cybersecurity field, of a working document to include the most important ideas meant to ensure that the human resource is ready and motivated to stay in Romania, Iulian Alecu, the deputy general director of the National Response Centre for Cyber Security Incidents (CERT-RO) told AGERPRES on Monday. "Collaboration between the state, the private environment and the educational area is very important. It is already applied with great success in such countries as UK, USA and Israel. We just started this in several projects and areas, but our idea was to think of an "white paper," a draft or better said a working document to focus on what this collaboration between the three areas would mean, so that we can have it ready for this conference [Annual International Conference of CERT-RO, titled "The New Global Challenges in Cyber Security - editor's note], after which we will hand it over to the other institutions, universities. In this respect, whoever will like the idea and consider it all right can bring certain additions, so that we can work on this document. And starting from here we can slowly begin an organised collaboration between the state - the private environment - the universities, with its main objective to train the human resource, to motivate the human resource, to keep the human resource in the cybersecurity field in the country. Later on, we can extend this document to include other fields of activity as well," explained Alecu. The CERT-RO official added that the "white paper" document as it was called will be published on the Website of this institution as soon as the ideas coming from the people operating in cybersecurity will be centralized. "We wanted to make the first step now, at the annual conference that we are going to have these days in Bucharest. We though of this version, we met several actors in the field, my colleagues took over their ideas and at the end of the conference we will have a draft with the ideas that will be sent to the universities and relevant state institutions. The document will be made public on the CERT-RO Website, for we want to have a starting point for other collaborations between the three actors and to get sure the human resource is ready, motivated and that we can keep it in Romania," added the deputy general director of CERT-RO. In the same context of the dangers behind the cyber attacks, the general director of the National News Agency AGERPRES, Claudia Nicolae, brought up, at one of the panels of the 9th edition of the Annual International Conference regarding the new global challenges in the cyber security field, organised at the Parliament Palace over October 7-8, the need to educate the Internet users. She reminded thus about the role played by mass media in promoting certain concepts underlying proper cybersecurity education. "The mission of the National News Agency AGERPRES was, is and will be that of promptly and objectively offering the mass media in Romania, as well as the mass media abroad, the possibility of permanently connecting with equidistant and fair journalistic materials. We are aware and we realize that the information we provide reaches millions of people and that, besides giving the information, our role is also to raise awareness and even to educate (...). In 2016, AGERPRES launched the Cybersecurity section, which includes news dedicated to the strategic problems of the cyber space and security. Moreover, we have launched this month the editorial project #CyberFiles, which includes the presentation of some of the most important cyber attacks that happened worldwide, which affected small and medium-sized companies, corporations, governments or institutions of national interest and also domestic users," said Claudia Nicolae. She added that other actions-events promoted by the National News Agency were the cybersecurity courses dedicated to journalists (from AGERPRES but also for all the other journalists in Romania), organised in 2016, 2017 and 2018, together with the CERT-RO team. "The most important topics presented by the CERT-RO experts were different types of cyber attacks, cybersecurity elements, both from the perspective of the attacker and that of the user, protection and anonymization measures, as well as other notions meant to increase the degree of specialization of the journalists in this field. There were also included practical demonstrations, such as the simulation of a cyber attack, among other things the participants being tested for awareness of dangers posed by these kinds of threats. Another topic for discussions was the General Data Protecion Regulation (GDPR), which had an impact on journalists," said the General director of AGERPRES. CERT-RO organised over October 7-8 the 9th edition of the Annual International Conference titled "The New Global Challenges in Cyber Security." During the two days of the conference participants will approach topics such as security of the 5G network, cybercrime, education and awareness, the implementation of the NIS (Networking Information Security) Directive, Artificial Intelligence and Research&Development in cyber security. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Badea, editor: Oana Tilica; EN - editor: Cristina Zaharia)