Moldova to establish a Cyber Security Agency.
At a meeting at the State Chancellery, the draft regulation on the organization and functioning of the relevant agency was examined, which establishes the mission, fields of activity, functions, powers, including those of the Cyber Security Agency’s leadership. The new Agency will be subordinated to the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalization, will have the statue of a public law legal entity, with funding from the state budget, as well as from the resources of foreign and local donors. The Agency will be responsible for implementing the state's cybersecurity policy to ensure a high level of security for the information networks and systems of service providers that are essential to the functioning of the state and society. The Cyber Security Agency will be responsible for identification and accounting of service providers; state supervision and control of service providers' compliance with legal provisions; national and international cooperation and information exchange in the field of cybersecurity. The Agency will be a single point of contact and response to cyber incidents, provide methodological guidance and regulation, and engage in research and development. It will have a staff of 49 and will be headed by a director appointed by the Minister of Economic Development and Digitalization. The annual salary expenses of the Agency's staff will amount to about 26.3 million lei. At the same time, it is proposed that the staff of the cyber incident response team will be given a specific allowance of 600% of their salary, while the rest of the staff will receive 200%. Agency staff will be required to undergo periodic training. For 7-8 specialists to be trained annually, it would require from 390 thousand to 650 thousand lei per year. Besides, considerable expenses - about 10 million lei - are needed for the purchase of special equipment and software. According to the explanatory note to the draft, the main goal of the new Agency is to ensure an adequate response to cyber incidents, consolidate cyber security, and contribute to the improvement of the regulatory framework for the protection of cyber security. It is planned to introduce a mandatory mechanism for reporting cyber incidents, reduce risks and costs associated with cybercrime. According to the authors of the project, the annual damage from cybercrime in Moldova is about $42 million (based on the calculation that the global average damage, according to McAfee research, is 0.3% of GDP). // 03.10.2023 - InfoMarket.
