BERLIN, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- German companies and institutions must better protect their infrastructures, especially against digital attacks, in order to reduce economic risks, said Jani Nakos of the German association for the protection of critical infrastructures (BSKI), in an interview with Xinhua on Wednesday.
In July 2015, the German government passed a law to increase the security of information technology systems, particularly for so-called "critical infrastructures" (Kritis). Affected companies mainly come from the sectors of energy, IT, water and food supply, finance, health care and transportation.
The law, known as the IT Security Act, authorizes the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) to monitor affected companies for compliance with IT security standards in order to avoid security deficiencies.
However, "the requirements for Kritis-classified companies for the protection of their infrastructures are enormous and require large investments," Nakos told Xinhua during this year's leading security fair in the German city of Essen.
As a consequence, "many companies are trying to not be registered as Kritis as classified by the BSI. In that case, they do not have to comply with the costly requirements and security regulations while the vulnerable points for an attack by hackers, for example, remain," Nakos explained.
On Monday, the German energy company RWE was the target of a hacking attack that resulted in the company's website being temporarily unavailable. Just a few days earlier, a video was published on YouTube threatening to attack the energy company's servers if RWE did not stop the deforestation of the Hambach forest in order to extract brown coal.
"Many issues, such as the protection of critical infrastructures, are so complex that they cannot be resolved in a single governmental legislature. We therefore call for more specialists to be deployed at federal, state and municipal administrative levels to deal with these issues better," said Nakos.
"As digitalization progresses, IT security is becoming indispensable. It is getting more and more important with regards to protecting our infrastructure," Nakos added.
