The subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE) and the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) hold a public hearing on the issue of fighting cyber attacks, in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Brussels

fight against cyber attacks (T)

public hearing

LISEK, Krzysztof (EPP, PL)

Fighting cyber attacks - a challenge for our societies: extracts from the public hearing

SOUNDBITE (English), Krzysztof LISEK (EPP, PL), We remember what happened in Estonia we know what happened in Georgia during the Russian-Georgian conflict 2008. We know from media, from our colleagues from different parliaments, not from Europe, from the United States how important this issue is today. Different organizations discuss this subject, Nato discusses this subject, so I think it&rsquo;s time to have some information for us for the security and defence subcommittee of the European Parliament.

SOUNDBITE (English), Eneken TIKK, Legal Adviser, Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, Tallinn, We have the legal framework, nothing is new in this cyber security or cyber directed paradigm. It&rsquo;s rather that we need to very critically look at the instruments that we have put in place. And the Estonian incident that I&rsquo;ve had a more or less hands on opportunity to explore from a legal perspective showed that all we really need to do is take a very practical legal look at how we implement that convention on national level.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dr. Udo HELMBRECHT, Director, European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), The easiest way is you know if you live in a city, you know your surroundings, you lock your door, you lock your windows if you go on holiday. But we are not socialized on how to behave on the Internet. So it&rsquo;s a big issue I think for us in these days to educate children to educate the younger generation how to behave in social networks, how to behave on the Internet. And if you have your normal human mindset then it&rsquo;s the same safety and security as you have in the real world. So in this area what ENISA does is making this awareness campaign.

SOUNDBITE (English),  Andrea SERVIDA, Deputy Head of Unit-Internet; Network and Information Security &#8211; DG INFSO, But what I think is more interesting for our considerations perhaps are the last one there. Where Switzerland estimated that the major disruption for the country would be equivalent to 1.2% of the GDP. So if you take just that measure and we do apply to what might be 1.2% of the GDP of any country taking that as a kind of say lower threshold below which one would really be going with any disruption. Then of course I mean you can see that you know we are talking about a huge number.

SOUNDBITE (French), Radom&#237;r JANSKY, DG Home, We&rsquo;ve had a number of rather large previously unknown attacks of a dangerous scale in Estonia and Lithuania in 2007 and 2008 respectively. You probably heard about them, particularly the attack in Estonia was rather damaging for Estonia and quite spectacular as well. More recently in March 2009 computer systems of governments and private organizations of 103 countries were attacked by malware installed and extracted sensitive and classified documents. These governments and private organizations included European embassies including here in Brussels.