Europe ‘not prepared for cyberattacks’

A lack of action and agreement on cybersecurity is undermining Europe’s ability to deal with attacks on computing infrastructure, politicians have said.

“The EU is not ready to deal with a large-scale cyberattack,” Marietje Schaake, a Dutch MEP, told a conference in Brussels on 27 June. National governments are reluctant to work together and have not agreed how they should behave online, she said at the event, organised by networking service Science Business.

Evidence of this lack of readiness has been abundant, with the Wannacry ransom attack in May affecting public service providers and companies across Europe. A similar attack last week harmed companies in Russia, as well as government and bank infrastructure in Ukraine.