Assistant Minister for Information Society Sava Savić has presented earlier today the status of the information safety in the Republic of Serbia at the conference “Infosec” devoted to raising the level of information safety in the region of the Western Balkans.
The aim of the conference is to establish international cooperation, develop scientific research in this field and to draw attention of government structures and wider public to the information safety as an increasingly significant resource of the information and communication systems of every country, as well as the existence of increasingly sophisticated threats in cyber space, which can jeopardize the stability of the regional economy and society.
Mr Savić has used the occasion to underline that the issue of the information safety is the global issue, and the issue of digital responsibility is on the government, economy, non-governmental sectors, and not only an individual.
Assistant Minister for Information Society has stressed that the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunication has prepared four regulations adopted by the Government on November 17, 2016, which ensure the implementation of the law to operators of ICT systems of special importance, as follows: Regulation on closer content of acts on safety of information and communication systems of special importance, manner of control and the content of reports on safety control of ICT systems of special importance; Regulation on defining the lists of jobs in the fields in which the activities of general interest are performed and which use ICT systems of special importance; and the Regulation on the procedure of submitting the data, lists, types and importance of incidents and the process of notification on incidents in ICT systems of special importance.
“Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunication manages the Body for coordination of activities of information safety. Preparations for the beginning of operation of the National CERT are in progress, and the body is expected to start operating in 2017”, says Sava Savić, adding that the CERT of national bodies (UZZPRO) has been protecting the systems of state bodies for years, and that some institutions have already established the CERTs (such as the MUP CERT, AMRES CERT).
Since children on the Internet are the most vulnerable part of the population, Mr Savić has stressed that the Government of the Republic of Serbia adopted the Regulation on Safety of Children using ICT.
Based on this Regulation, according to the Assistant Minister, a unique contact centre will be established soon for counselling of children, parents, pupils and teachers, on advantages and risks of using the Internet, including the risk of becoming addicted to the use of video games and the Internet. As Mr Savić has pointed out, this centre will serve also for receiving reports of harmful, inappropriate and illegal contents and behaviour online, i.e. reports of violation of rights and interests of children, and the function of the centre will also be to forward the reports on inappropriate or harmful contents to competent institutions, within the Regulation defined by the intersectoral cooperation.
The representatives of Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia presented the situation of the information safety and the regulatory framework in their countries and the comparisons of the regional information safety with the directives of the European Union.
Mr Savić has thanked the representatives of the countries from the region, representatives of the IT industry and the audience from the academic sector and concluded that the information safety is rather significant, while the regional cooperation in this field is essential, since the issue of the information safety is not local in character, but represents a global challenge the countries should jointly respond to.
