NATO team in Albania regarding cyberattacks, Peleshi: We are protected by the Alliance, but vigilance is needed

Following the communication of Prime Minister Edi Rama with the Secretary General of the Alliance Jens Stoltenberg after the cyberattacks a NATO team arrived in Albania to assist the Government on a political and technical level.

The delegation headed by Mr. James Appathurai the Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges met first the Defense Minister Niko Peleshi.

During the joint conference, Minister Niko Peleshi clarified the purpose of the Alliance team's visit to our country:“This team comes to our country to provide assistance regarding cyber issues, familiarization with the current situation as well as the needs and opportunities for addressing these issues in the future. After the cyberattacks on the information technology systems and infrastructure of the Albanian state, already identified its origin, the reaction and response of the country's specialized structures in close cooperation with the allied countries was immediate. These attacks were intended to completely destroy the systems and platforms of government services, but they did not achieve the goal of wiping out and destroying all of our information technology systems. The Albanian Government reacted immediately after providing irrefutable evidence about the origin of the attack by immediately cutting off relations with Iran. Our allies strongly condemned the attacks and came out on Albania's side through various statements or with the approach of specialized assistance in the cyber field. Currently, after nearly 5 weeks of intensive work, it has become possible to restore various systems and platforms to the service of the citizens of our country”, - explained the Defense Minister.

According to Minister Peleshi: "these attacks have shown that we cannot be protected permanently, but we must be vigilant and able to protect our country’s infrastructure and information technologies by investing more in the direction of cyber war. Numerous investments have been made these years, but this is a new war that has gained another intensity even after the Russian aggression in Ukraine, which has disrupted geopolitical balances and changed the security scheme".

The Minister guaranteed that the security and defense systems in the Ministry of Defense were unaffected by the attack, because they are disconnected from the general communication network, but despite this, the readiness and level of attention and security for all these systems has been increased.
Minister Peleshi also thanked the allies for the attitude taken immediately after the attacks, offering their assistance to prevent cyberattacks in the future: "The visit of today's team is a solidarity testimony of the support, of the immediate reaction of the Alliance, NATO, of which we are part of. Being one of NATO's allies makes us safe, but of course more vigilance is needed from all institutions". - said Minister Peleshi.

Mr. James Appathurai the Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges of NATO, said that Albania is not alone in this journey, because NATO supports it: "All NATO countries are aware of the attack on Albania and certainly support it in this direction. This is the message that the Secretary General gave to Prime Minister Rama in the previous meeting. Of course, I wanted to emphasize the many efforts that the Albanian state has made, starting from the Government down to the lower instances, to cope with these attacks that have been made. Of course, the help came from NATO, it came at the technical level from different NATO countries, but also at the individual level from different structures. My team and I have come here for several different reasons, but first the main reason is to look at the situation and to make a coordination of the allies and NATO headquarters regarding the cyberattack that happened, to see the long-term necessities the that Albania needs to build a protection network against these cyberattacks. Albania is making progress in this direction", - said Mr. Appathurai, once again emphasizing the Alliance's defense in this battle.

The NATO team will also meet with representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Home Affairs, as well as with representatives of National Agency for Information Society (NIAS).