TIRANA, Sept 22 /ATA/ Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku, also Minister of Infrastructure and Energy, stated on Thursday that a good part of the Balkans is under cyber attacks and the fact that most of the countries under attack are NATO members speaks of a critical moment.
“Albania is under attack from another country, which has greater financial opportunities and technological capacities than us,” Balluku said in her remarks in Parliament.
This moment should not be taken advantage of and used as a war horse.
“The attack was aimed at deleting all data. No data was lost, despite the fact that the attack was well organized. We welcome your cooperation at this moment, which was offered by the DP deputy, Ervin Salianji. We ask the opposition not to take advantage of this moment. Albania is under a cyber attack, which today is called a war. The opposition should not use it for narrative counteroffensives,” said Balluku.
Balluku also appealed for the cooperation of the opposition to review some of the legal acts on cyber defense.
“We will soon present by-laws to the parliamentary committees and we would like to see your cooperation in reality,” said Balluku.
Balluku emphasized that Albania has invested in the digitization of services, but was not prepared to cope with attacks of this degree.
“Digitization and cyber security are two different sectors that go hand in hand, one aims at development, the other at defense which is a pressing issue to be addressed nowadays. They stayed in our systems for 14 months because they were invisible. We do not have advanced systems in place. We were not prepared to respond to attacks of this degree, organized and sponsored by another state. Yes, we have been under hacker attacks, be them amateur or professional, we managed to repel them. It was impossible for us to withstand the attack from 4 well-organized sources,” Balluku said.
Balluku emphasized that the government turned to the FBI for an analysis of the attack.
“The FBI came to Tirana and conducted an indepth analysis. Microsoft sent its teams and today they are here following up the situation step by step, from analysis to strategy development, to help us with upcoming actions,” she said.
/sm/
