The shadow of Russia has always loomed over the internet, but the pandemic, which moved citizen’s lives into the digital sphere, saw a rise in security breaches within European businesses and institutions. Cyber attacks against key European sectors doubled in 2020. Although Brussels is working to plug the gaps, the invasion of Ukraine threatens to intensify the cyber war.
Despite European hopes being invested in the technology, contact tracing apps have only succeeded in tracking 5% of registered cases since they were introduced in the EU. The lack of public confidence in the scheme has proven to be an insurmountable hurdle.
European countries have spent months debating what to do with data collected through contact tracing apps. A lack of consensus, as well as the launch of new systems by Apple and Google, lessened the chances of a unified protocol among the bloc. What is clear is that Europe always prioritised the data protection of its own users.
The Cybersecurity Agency has been tasked with building a common defence, without any faults, against cyberattacks in the EU. While it seemed like an uphill struggle at first, restructure after restructure has built it into an organisation at the forefront of fighting Brussels’ war on cybercriminals.
The Covid-19 crisis has turned us into a digital society. Large parts of our day-to-day lives now take place in the digital sphere and this has made Member States much more vulnerable to cyberattacks. To neutralise them, the European Commission launched its new Cybersecurity Strategy in December 2020.
Member states have imposed eight hundred and eighty sanctions since the law was introduced in May 2018, but the war against the tech giants has just begun. If the EU wants to win it, it will need to commit to it with greater investment and cooperation from all its members.
Nationalising companies is no longer a taboo topic for the European Union's state members. After the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st-century privatisations, the economic crisis of 2008 gave a central role back to State ownership. The COVID-19 outbreak has opened the leading European companies' doors to the public capital.
