Participation in a cybersecurity conference for energy infrastructure
On October 26, a conference was held at the G. S. Rakovski Military Academy „"Cybersecurity in electric mobility and digital transformation in energy infrastructure"“, part of the European Cybersecurity Month 2018. The event was held with the key participation of the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel.
The conference was organized by the National Industry Organization for Electric Mobility - IKEM, and partners include the G. S. Rakovski Military Academy, the Sofia Security Forum, the Bulgarian Nuclear Society, "Kozloduy NPP New Build" EAD, EnergoService AD and EVN Bulgaria. Steve Purser, Head of the Key Operations Unit at ENISA (EU Information Security Agency); Delyan Dobrev – Chairman of the Energy Committee of the National Assembly and Andrey Kovachev – Member of the European Parliament, participated in the opening with short speeches.
Commissioner Mariya Gabriel stressed that most companies today do not have their own cybersecurity experts, and citizens are not cybersecurity experts either. „"Everyone who uses a digital device should be aware of cybersecurity risks and practice a good enough level of cyber hygiene.". The Bulgarian Commissioner reminded that the European Commission recently proposed to create a European Cybersecurity Competence Center, which would bring together all the expertise existing in the Member States. A network of national competence centers was also launched, and will be launched in November with a pilot project worth a total of 50 million euros.
According to data presented by the Ministry of Energy, cyberattacks cost the global economy over $600 billion per year and threaten all organizations. At the same time, according to data from European institutions, existing capabilities are not sufficient to guarantee a high level of security of networks and information systems in the Union.
In Bulgaria, victims of cyberattacks can turn to the National Center for Information Security Incident Response (CERT Bulgaria), as well as to organizations such as the Bulgarian Association for Corporate Security (BAKS). According to conference participants, every organization must implement measures for physical and information security of its assets - material, human, information, intellectual, and physical security systems must provide protection in depth and prevent unauthorized access to critical assets, equipment and information. Through risk analysis and assessment, critical assets and the level of security necessary to protect the assets and infrastructure of the respective organization must be determined, as an assessment of the effectiveness of the organization's existing security systems is necessary and subsequent upgrading and modernization through periodic control and inspections.
The panel discussion included experts on the topic, who discussed the necessary measures at the institutional and corporate levels and shared their experience with specific cases. Speeches were made by Todor Galev from the Center for the Study of Democracy, Ivan Pironkov – representative of Westinghouse for Bulgaria, Stefan Apostolov – member of the Board of Directors of IKEM and Dimitar Simidchiev – Chairman of McAfee Data Loss Prevention CAB. As most of the panelists noted, the problem of cybersecurity is as much technological as it is dependent on the human factor. Password theft is the main risk to the safety of corporate data, with 75% of network attacks being made possible due to unreliable or stolen passwords.
In the second panel, a discussion was held on "Educational Model Cybersecurity in Electric Mobility" with representatives of educational and non-governmental organizations.
