Mission-critical infrastructures such as power plants, public transport, banks or hospitals are subject to very strict safety precaution. Outages or failures could lead to severe consequences and impair national security. Now, the EU committee has passed a new law that is to provide higher IT security for relevant companies. Supply shortages are thus to be avoided and putting national security at risk ought to be prevented pre-emptively.
Operators of critical infratructures are now obligated to report incidents that may cause a risk to security or data protection such as assaults by hackers or system crashes. Moreover, the EU Member States have to invest in additional hard- and software and test systems for possible loopholes in order to improve them if necessary. If they fail to do so, they will be prosecuted.
New law only applies to relevant companies
The exception: Social Media. Facebook, Twitter and other Social Media platforms as well as small digital companies are exempt from the new regulation. Only critical infrastructures of essential companies underlie the law that has just been passed this past week. The public sector remains unaffected as well for now.
Better protection against terrorist attacks
EU digital commissioner Günther Oettinger announced that with the new law, critical infrastructures in EU Member States are now to be better protected against terrorist attacks via the internet. National alarming systems and a better exchange of information among the Member States will also lead to a faster and improved correction of defects in case of an attack.
Sources: heise.de, protekt-leipzig.de
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