Sofia – Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev on Thursday said after a meeting of the Consultative Council on National Security (CCNS) that his country needed to improve cyber security amid intense attacks.
“Recently, Bulgaria has been a subject of intense cyber attacks against information infrastructure of the country, including critical infrastructure and government institutions,’’ Plevneliev said.
Plevneliev, who is the head of the CCNS, said Bulgaria lagged behind other European Union (EU) countries and NATO members in the field of cyber security, and was unable to fulfill its commitments to the collective security.
The council’s position was that the government should provide funding to certain state institutions to increase the number of cyber security experts to acquire technological capabilities for preventing and counteracting current cyber threats.
Plevneliev said that the creation of a cyber defence operational centre for the Ministry of Defence had to be accelerated, and cooperation with cyber security institutions in the EU and NATO should be strengthened.
October and November 2015 websites of Bulgarian institutions such as the Ministry of Interior, the State Agency for National Security, the parliament, the president, and the Central Election Commission experienced difficulties as a result of a distributed denial-of-service attack. (Xinhua/NAN)
