Cristian Bușoi, concerned about Romania's cyber security: “We must invest in resilience, in cybersecurity, to protect our critical entities”

Cristian Bușoi, secretary of state in the Ministry of Energy, declared that the establishment of the Response Center for Cyber ​​Security Incidents in Energy (CRISCE) is on the circuit of normative acts.

Cristian Bușoi/PHOTO: Mediafax

“The establishment of the Center is on the circuit of interministerial normative acts. We have some technical discussions with the Ministry of Labour. Of course, this IT Incident Response Center in the field of Energy will be extremely relevant.

But, beyond this center, which will be of significant importance, the timely, strict implementation of European legislation, extremely important and perhaps more important than anything is the need to be aware that we must invest in resilience, in cybersecurity, to protect our critical entities“Buşoi said at the Energy Cybersecurity Forum, according to Agerpres.

He stated that the new legislation and the obligations to protect critical entities from a cyber point of view do nothing but prepare the ground in terms of the need for investment and emphasized that there is more and more awareness of the fact that we are in a hybrid war.

“As president of the Industry and Energy Committee of the European Parliament between 2019 and 2024, I actively participated in the debate, the adoption of the NIS II directive and the normative act on the resilience of critical entities. Also, in the new legislation on gas and hydrogen networks, very clear obligations were introduced to protect these entities from a cyber point of view.

And in the 1999 legislation on electricity networks, the European legislation, there are these provisions. There are exercises at the European level to test critical infrastructures, and here the energy infrastructure plays a very important role.

But all these implementations in the national legislation, all these registrations in the registers which are mandatory and it is very important to be aware of them, and if necessary, sanctions can also be reached (…) all these things can only prepare the ground for the need for investments and the need for concrete actions, because we see that the debate related to cyber attacks is increasingly important. (…).

More and more at the European level we are aware that we are the target of attacks, we are in a hybrid war, we are no longer talking only about these actions, of hackers who want to get their hands on data, want to obtain ransoms. These things happen, most of them are not made public”the official explained.

He pointed out that artificial intelligence helps us to be more effective in cybersecurity and resilience, but also helps cybercriminals to be more effective in illegal and negative actions.

“But, beyond this phenomenon, the phenomenon of state entities that attack critical infrastructures is increasingly appearing and, even if they are difficult to demonstrate sometimes or most of the time, we must be more and more prepared in the face of this phenomenon as well”said Cristian Buşoi.

The official from the Ministry of Energy also indicated that it is also worrying that we are becoming more and more dependent on some technologies that are produced in China, many of them related to smart devices.

“We have inverters, we have all kinds of devices that can be programmed remotely and, even if so far we don't have demonstrated or demonstrable reasons (…) that we could or were influenced or attacked, I think we have to ask ourselves an important question mark from this point of view as well”, he specified.

At the same time, Buşoi mentioned that all the massive investments that are currently being made in the energy area in order to lower the price, to be independent and to increase our energy security, both in the nuclear field and in the natural gas field, but also in the transport or distribution network, must have an extremely solid cyber resilience component and protection against cyber attacks attached.