“When you talked about Portugal in cyberspace, it makes you want to cry.” Expert warns of lack of preparation in the face of cyberattacks – Observer
The computer systems specialist José Tribolet warned this Monday of the lack of prevention and resilience in Portugal as well in response to cyberattacks, advocating greater regulation of cyberspace.
“When you talked about Portugal in cyberspace, it makes you want to cry. What is Portugal in cyberspace? I don’t know that you are asking this question and you are trying to structurally understand it.“, said the professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, who was speaking at a ‘webinar’ promoted by the Legal Institute of Communication (IJC) of the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra, entitled “(In)Security in the Network – Planning of the Virtual Space”.
For the researcher, it is essential for the country to define what is “important to preserve programs” that can destroy information or change functionality.
“What is the Treaty that we have to preserve in order to be resilient and restore a minimum of social life in the face of an attack?”, he asked, noting that there is no work done in this direction, except in the context of NATO (North Atlantic Organization) and which always follows “in a spirit of strict military understanding”.
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José Tribolet for those who need preservation, for example, are given as in the Institute of Registries and Notaries.
“It is the responsibility of the State to provide institutional elements for the life of the nation. And what is being done to list what is essential? What is being done to preserve it? Assuming there is information, where are the information bases and how long [serão repostas]?”, He asked.
For the situation specialist, “it is very worrying”, considering that there is no training or thought around the issues.
“The preservation of the essential structure and information associated with entities critical to the life of the country is fundamental. We have to have mechanisms of preservation and resilience”,
According to the professor, the world is “at an accelerated risk of losing control of evolution”because age “always comprises a dynamics of systems”.
“We need urgent measures to make society more robust. It takes the engineering acts so that we can define those responsible for computing for the acts. Today, anyone puts a database on site and no one is going to ask or any professional,” she noted.
Making an analogy with the construction of bridges, José Tribolet noted that in construction “it is necessary projects, preliminary projects, engineers who supervise and everything is held accountable”.
“In the IT area, zero”, noted the specialist.