Despite a number of initiatives within the European Network and Information Security community to establish frameworks and standard operating procedures, the EU-level response to cyber incidents, and in particular these which lead to crisis situations, lacks consistency.

ENISA analysed the EU-level crisis management frameworks in five different sectors (aviation, civil protection, border control, counter-terrorism and health and disease control) to make recommendations on more efficient cyber crisis cooperation and management.

Udo Helmbrecht, ENISA’s executive director, said: “The message we try to pass with this study is that the effective mitigation of any type of crisis caused by cyber incidents does not only depend on the mitigation of the impacts of that crisis, it depends also very much on the effective mitigation of the cyber incidents which caused it. Today, EU decision makers are in the privileged position to take action before such a cybercrisis occurs; this study offers insight into what can be done.”

The key five recommendations by ENISA regarding priorities to reinforce the EU-level capabilities to manage effectively the next cyber crisis are as follows:

• The European Commission together with the EU Member States should revisit the current EU legislation on cyber crisis management to better reflect the distinction between cause and effect and better leverage on the development of the cyber crisis management field as an essential tool for the mitigation of crises caused by cyber incidents.
• The EU Member States should develop and formally adopt an EU-level crisis management plan, specific to the crises induced by cybersecurity incidents.
• The European Commission and the EU Member States should create an EU-level pool of cyber experts with the primary objective to exchange information and best practices.
• The Member States should develop and formally adopt EU-level cyber standard operating procedures (SOPs).
• The European Commission should fund the design and development an EU-level cyber crisis cooperation platform to offer support to cyber crisis management and cooperation activities between the Member States, in conjunction with the Core Service Platform of the Cyber Security Digital Services Infrastructure (of the Connecting Europe Facility funding program).

ENISA is fully committed to support the European Commission and the EU Member States in implementing these recommendations.

Full report is available here

Source: www.enisa.europa.eu