BSI President Claudia Plattner warns of cyber attacks: “The threat situation is higher than ever.”

Enlarge image

Sees companies and institutions as having a duty: BSI President Claudia Plattner

Photo: Christian Ditsch / epd / IMAGO

The President of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Claudia Plattner, urgently warned companies and public institutions on Wednesday about a new wave of cyber attacks.

“The threat situation is higher than ever,” said Plattner at the “Transform 2024” event organized by the digital association Bitkom in Berlin.

The question is not whether an attack will be successful, but only when.

The most serious threat comes from attacks using encryption software (“ransomware”).

It is striking how often municipalities, hospitals and other public institutions are currently being attacked.

This also has to do with the current geopolitical tension.

At the same time, disinformation campaigns are increasingly creating the impression that the state is unable to protect its people, its institutions and its companies.

“We cannot accept this and certainly cannot put up with it.” Last year, the Federal Criminal Police Office reported that cyber attacks would cause damage to the economy amounting to 206 billion euros in 2022.

Companies and institutions have a duty

In Plattner's opinion, when it comes to protecting against the consequences of a cyber attack, there is no problem with measures, but rather an implementation problem.

Her agency, which has 1,785 employees, can help prevent cyber attacks and in the emergency situation after an attack, said the qualified mathematician who took over the management of the BSI last summer.

“The ability to implement everything we have to do, however, lies with the companies and institutions.” The BSI will not be able to implement concrete cyber defense on site, even if the office has ten times as many people.

That is not the authority's job.

The BSI is currently recording “a gigantic increase in vulnerabilities.”

Accordingly, the authority has to deal directly with 70 new security vulnerabilities every day.

At the same time, the number of variants of malware is increasing sharply every day.

At the Bitkom event, Plattner promoted the “Alliance for Cyber ​​Security” founded in 2012.

Almost 8,000 companies are now active in this network.

Particularly successful implementations (“best practices”) would be presented in the merger.

“If you don’t know where to start, this is a really, really good place to start.”

mak/dpa