As the digital state grows, cybersecurity is now reduced to a matter of state security and state sovereignty, said Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Nikodimos Damianou.
In his address at the 1st World Cybersecurity Summit 2024, Mr. Damianou underlined that resilience in cyberspace is a necessary parameter to enable companies to derive the maximum benefits from digital evolution and for states to build a resilient and competitive digital economy .
"In other words, cyber security is a prerequisite for digital policy and we treat it as such," he added.
Mr. Damianou pointed out that the rapid technological developments and our dependence on technology make the need to protect our data, systems and digital infrastructure urgent and pressing and added: "As the digital footprint of organizations, states and citizens increases, so does and the risk but also the need to implement protection measures against cyber-attacks".
It referred to a survey by the Digital Security Authority conducted between October and November 2023, which showed that one in 2 businesses in Cyprus had experienced some sort of attack in the previous 12 months with an average of one attack per week. The percentage of citizens who were attacked during the period in question was 53%.
"Cyber security is now reduced to a matter of national security for states and a matter of state sovereignty, and as such we and Europe are dealing with it," Mr. Damianou emphasized.
At the same time, Mr. Damianou pointed out that the use of artificial intelligence makes dealing with cyber-attacks even more difficult, as a malicious software can evolve and attack an infrastructure and bypass patterns and mechanisms of defense systems, while the other side of the coin , he added, is the use of artificial intelligence in cyber defense systems and tools.
Speaking at the conference via video conference, the Minister of Digital Governance of Greece Dimitris Papastergiou emphasized that the use of AI "creates a completely new reality".
Mr. Papastergiou said that as of December 2023, Greece has established the Digital Assistant, which constitutes the first application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the Greek public administration, "bringing out the approximately 3.720 services and 4.000 processes that have recorded in the official database".
In the field of cyber security, the Greek Minister said that the first effort of the Greek Government is to establish the legislation for the national security authority, which covers the gaps that existed in the areas of protection beyond the four bodies that were charged with this responsibility.
This is a more compact cyber security policy, which will bring us into the new era, he said, recalling the European directive NIS 2, which expands the entities that must be protected from 70 that are today to 2.000.
For his part, the Commissioner for Communications, George Michaelidis mentioned in his own welcome that the cyber threat environment is evolving, as malicious actors have managed to exploit artificial intelligence, changing the field of cyber security.
Saying that the SOC national center has received and analyzed 150.000 cyber incident alerts, Mr Michaelidis said it is almost impossible for a human to analyze all these alerts in a correct and timely manner.
To this end, he added, technology is being used to compensate for the lack of manpower in the field of cyber security. In particular, he said that automation is being used to evaluate incident alerts, while the possibility of using machine learning and AI to analyze alerts is being considered.
These mechanisms, he added, can analyze web traffic and behavior to identify unusual activity, which may lead to further investigation of an alert.
Mr. Michaelides also referred to the changes in the regulatory framework with the implementation of the European directive NIS 2, based on which the regulated critical entities increase from 70 to 700.
In addition, Rossella Mattiotti, an expert at the EU Agency for Cyber Security (ENISA), referred to the agency's actions to promote awareness of this critical issue, but also to exchange know-how, "as malicious actors use everything to carry out an attack, they evolve, adapt and use new techniques."
"The more we use IT, the more we use artificial intelligence, the more 'smart' we become, the attacks will increase," he concluded.
Source: KYPE