Pellegrini: Digital Services Must Be Reliable and Secure
Bratislava, November 14 (TASR) – Digital services have to be trustworthy and secure, stated Vice-premier for Investments and Informatisation Peter Pellegrini (Smer-SD) at a ceremonial opening of the 16th ITAPA 2017: Technology & HumanITy congress in Bratislava on Tuesday.
“Unless we’re able to ensure the appropriate trustworthiness and security of digital services, confidence in the digital world will disappear and we’ll have a problem,” said Pellegrini.
The vice-premier said the Government has recently approved a new draft law on cyber security which is expected to establish a new framework for progressing in this area. “However, it’s first and foremost the user’s responsibility to ensure the security of information systems and security in the digital world. Only then follows the ministry that operates the systems and the organisation above it. Security can’t be resolved by a law, it can only be resolved by responsible behaviour within the digital world,” stressed Pellegrini.
The vice-premier further pointed to the recent cases in which Slovakia failed to provide the smooth running of digital services. First he mentioned the slow delivery of official e-mails issued by state bodies following the introduction of electronic communications between businesses and state authorities in July.
The second more serious issue concerned electronic ID cards, as it had been discovered that existing software for electronic signatures wasn’t secure enough and that signatures could have been misused by hackers.
“Speaking of credibility, I have to say that the Slovak Republic will have to prepare better for the issue it will be facing [in this regard] in the future,” he said, adding that in the two aforementioned cases the state should have communicated the issue to the public in a better way.
The ITAPA 2017 congress is being attended by representatives of the Visegrad Four/V4 countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia). Poland is represented by the State Secretary responsible for international affairs at the Ministry of Digital Affairs, Krzysztof Szubert, the Czech Republic by Digital Agenda Coordinator of the Czech Government Office Ondrej Maly and Hungary is represented by Deputy State Secretary for EU Affairs and International Relations Akos Peter Mernyi. All the representatives concurred that in terms of digitisation, closer cooperation is needed not only within the V4 but also on the global level.
The IT congress in Bratislava lasts until Wednesday (November 15).
