The Federal Government assesses the threat situation in cyberspace as “tense to critical”.

This emerges from the 2021 management report of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), which was presented on Thursday.

Accordingly, the number of cyber attacks has continued to rise.

In some areas of information security, there is already a “red alert”, says BSI President Arne Schönbohm.

Helene Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) expressed the assessment that the risk situation in Germany would remain tense.

The reason for this is the increasing digitization, which offers cyber criminals more and more targets.

According to Schönbohm, working in the home office and relocating business online during the corona pandemic created additional points of attack.

The attacks would not only be more numerous and serious, but also more professional.

Cybercrime will become a bookable service, Schönbohm continued.

Criminals are offering their services for sale on the Darknet.

In particular, cyber attacks aimed at extorting ransom or hush money have increased, according to the BSI report.

Power supply and healthcare are also affected

In the reporting period between June of last year and May of this year, the number of malware variants increased: a total of 144 million new malware variants were detected. That is an increase of 22 percent compared to the previous year. In February of this year, 553,000 variants were discovered in one day, more than ever before. On average there were 394,000 new variants every day. Seehofer pointed out that the attacks are increasingly affecting areas "that are elementary for our society, such as the power supply and healthcare facilities".

Seehofer emphasized the efforts of the federal government for security in cyberspace.

"We have almost doubled the BSI with 700 new positions in this legislative period," he said.

It is a success that all cyber attacks could be fended off at the level of the federal administration.

The BSI also wants to advise states, municipalities, companies and citizens more on IT security.

The decisive factor, however, is that the council is also adopted.