The Executive Director of ENISA, Prof. Udo Helmbrecht, has given a keynote speech on “European and International Cooperation on Incident Response" during the Hungarian EU-Presidency Telecom Ministerial Conference on Critical Information Infrastructure Protection, CIIP, in Balatonfüred, Hungary, 15th April 2011.
The Agency Executive Director Prof. Udo Helmbrecht delivered the keynote at the Telecom Ministerial Conference on Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIIP), organised by the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in Balatonfüred, Hungary, on 15th April 2011.
Mr Helmbrecht began by stating that “Information and communication technologies have become the backbone of our economy and society. On a global scale, societies are interconnected by information technology - and are irreversibly dependant on it. Unfortunately global threats have also become possible and very real.”
He stressed that “Cooperation and communication are key to ensuring a successful response to an eventual cyber-attack or other large-scale disruption of ICT systems. This needs to be organised at a global level to be able to fight and mitigate security threats which cut across borders and legal jurisdictions effectively.”
He also pointed out that on a pan-European level several important first steps to improve our cyber security have already been made. Several of which are described in the recent communication on CIIP from the Commission, and that ENISA is playing a key role in facilitating much of this activity, and will continue to do so.
He further said, “ENISA is working to secure Europe’s information society. A great part of this is to protect our critical information infrastructure and the applications that run on top of it, and in parallel we have to reinforce incident response. Only then can growth and prosperity continue to be possible in a competition-oriented, globalised world.”
The Executive Director concluded that “International cooperation on incident response is by no means an easy task, and may require agreement on international rules of conduct, standards and norms. However, it is necessary if the international community is to be able to protect cyberspace.”
The full speech may be downloaded here
See also the Hungarian Minister of State for Infocommunication, Mr Zsolt Nyitriay's web site and summary of the event.