Cybersecurity costs will always be lower than that of fixing a major incident

Cybersecurity costs will always be lower than the cost of fixing a major incident, given that society, as an economy and as individuals, needs technology, Director of the National Cybersecurity Directorate (DNSC) Dan Cimpean, said on Tuesday at the 7th edition of the Digital Romania Forum.

"Cybersecurity is mentioned many times as a reason to somehow justify delaying the effort of digital transformation, adoption of new technologies. It is absolutely obvious as a society, as an economy, as individuals, that we need technology. In fact, it happens. We all have devices in our pockets, we use it at home, in the office, at playgrounds (...) even in other places, platforms of all kinds, more and more complicated, more and more sophisticated, which we really want to know that we can use without problems, therefore without causing us to lose the confidentiality of data. I see the digital transformation effort, with the security of information and the infrastructures that come with it. I believe that we must, more and more disciplined and systematically, include a part of cybersecurity in any investment in this field (...). Cybersecurity costs will always be lower than the cost of fixing a major incident. So, no matter how much you invest, hiring one or two people to deal with the implementation of those rules, tools, platforms, anti-malware and so on, will always be a lower cost than the cost of fixing an incident," said Cimpean.

He added that, in his view, a cyber-attack carried out from one end to the other with the help of Artificial Intelligence will happen "probably in 2-3 years."

"Regarding Artificial Intelligence and cyber, we have not yet seen, so far, and not only us, but also other colleagues from other states of the Union, a cyber attack prepared and executed from one end to the other with the help of Artificial Intelligence. My estimate is that we will get there probably in 2-3 years (...) We raise awareness quite a lot over our cybersecurity piece. And we try to send some messages, of basic cyber hygiene, to the standard user. To understand a little bit the magnitude of the problem we are facing, we have somewhere around 12-13 million daily Internet users. It is a gigantic mass. There are people who have devices, install, uninstall, do activities in the virtual space. I think it is very, very important to be able to send simple, elementary messages to the standard user, because, at national level, 12 million users mean a gigantic attack surface," said Cimpean.

Cybersecurity authorities and specialists on Tuesday attended the 7th edition of the Digital Romania Forum organised by the Financial Intelligence publication.