14 DAY TRIAL // Each year, European Union member states are required to send reports to the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), summarizing the major electronic communication network and service outages. The results are in and the agency has released its first annual report.
A number of 11 countries have reported incidents for last year, totaling 51 severe outages. The study shows that 60% of these incidents affected mobile Internet and mobile telephony services.
These particular issues – many of which caused by power supply problems – affected around 300,000 users.
It turns out that storms, heavy snow, floods and other natural phenomena are to blame for most of the power supply failures.
“We are now, for the first time, equipped with an overview of major cyber incidents in Europe. This is a decisive moment for the EU’s efforts to improve understanding of the impact of cyber security incidents,” ENISA Executive Director Professor Udo Helmbrecht said.
“But this still deals with only a small subset of cyber security incidents. This type of reporting should be extended to cover a wider range of incidents and more sectors.”
The complete report is available on ENISA's website.