Cybersecurity has become an unavoidable topic and a responsibility that has to be shared among everyone. Even more if we think that the attack surface and cyber threats are permanent and real, and that all the means to detect vulnerabilities in the context of the cyberspace are highly sophisticated, able to cause financial and reputational irreversible damages to companies, organizations, brands and people.

Accordingly to The Growing Challenge of Cyber Risk study, done by the Oliver Wyman consultant and with the Global Risks Report data from the World Wide Economical forum, the cyberattacks estimated impact has a calculated cost to the economy around 50 to 120 thousand million dollars which is incomparable to the damaged caused by a hurricane. The same study reveals that the annual cost of cybercrimes rounds billions of dollars and the risk of succeeding is higher than a terrorist attack.

With the evolution of digital transformation speed and the increasing usage of Artificial Intelligence, the risk of exposition to the cyberspace and the attack surface also increase, which must motivate by itself a strategical reflection and rigorous among all the stakeholders with cybersecurity responsibilities.

Analyzing the new Government’s program, recently taken, it is notable that exists the concern to set the cybercrime among the criminal phenomena of increasing complexity in pair with terrorism, human traffic or modern financial-economical criminality. Therefore, we trust in prevention actions and in a coordinated effort to face efficiently the cyber threats.

As an identity who is responsible for the management and operation of domains registration within .pt, the .PT has done for improving and increase the response capacity to security incidents through innovative solutions which allow a bigger resilience level, keeping the users trust and contributing for a safer and trustable internet usage.
 
Within a month which remarks the European Cyber Security Month, it is worth to mention 2 structured projects, started in 2019 that are aligned with the strategy that we stablished in security matters: the webcheck.pt platform and the PTSOC, a Security Operations Center. The webcheck.pt is a platform which resulted from a collaboration between the .PT and the Cyber Security National Center that allows to any citizen or entity to check, in real time, in a simple and intuitive way, a domain and a mailbox the level of conformity with the most recent standards for a secure communication between systems.

Three months after its release, the webcheck.pt counts with more than 42.000 visits and more than 15.000 executed tests, configuring a contribution to create greater awareness of the demanding in terms of security to those who have an online presence.

On another stream, the PTSOC is a Security Operations Center that is still in development to increase the response capacity to security incidents and cyber threats at .pt. This project, with high technical requirements, has the European Commission support and lays in 3 crucial pillars: People, Processes and Technology.

This way, as we believe that security is effectively a shared responsibility, we do not only assure the .PT internal capacity response to security incidents as we also reinforce the cooperation with all the interested parts, in particular with the national authority, the registrars (registry agents) and the users community, given our contribute to the worldwide challenge that is the preservation of an open, free and safe cyberspace. 

Inês Esteves is member of the .PT Board of Directors.

Source: https://www.dinheirovivo.pt/opiniao/o-que-tem-em-comum-cibercrimes-catastrofes-naturais-e-terrorismo