"Cyber security has never been more important for countries, businesses, and citizens due to increasingly frequent attacks and cyber warfare - and Croatia has to act strategically," state news agency Hina cited the CEO of the Zagreb-based IT company Span, Nikola Dujmovic, on Tuesday at the opening of the Cyber Security Center in Zagreb.

“Addressing more than one hundred people at the ceremony, Dujmovic said that the centre was launched in cooperation with partners from Israel, a global leader in this field,” Hina said. “Cyber attacks are never harmless, especially not now in the age of digitization and the universal use of the Internet,” Dujmovic said, adding that “all our global customers, and increasingly domestic ones in the region, are aware of this and are looking for solutions and education.”

“He said that these attacks had increased by 600 times, which was also visible two weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Hina said, without specifying the time-frame for the comparison. Span already has about a hundred cyber security experts and they are planning to employ some more experts in the newly opened center.

“We will educate people at the center. For now, we have planned to invest about €1 million in all this, and most of that has already been disbursed, but the entire investment will continue and could reach up to €2 million, because it is extremely necessary,” Dujmovic was quoted as saying.

He said that they had received great help at the Israeli embassy in Croatia, and then in Israel itself, where they had the opportunity to learn about cyber security first-hand, and came back “changed and even more ambitious” and further developed the idea of ​​the center.

Israel has a national department for cyber security and a telephone hotline that anyone in the country can use to report cyber attacks or suspicious activity, so that these threats get immediate response. The outgoing Israeli ambassador to Croatia, Ilan Mor, also attended the event.

“I am happy that a week before my departure from Croatia, after a four-year term, I can attend the presentation of Span’s cyber security centre because it is a success story, and a great achievement in relations and cooperation between Israel and Croatia. Israel realised a long time ago how vulnerable we all are due to our dependence on computers and how important cyber security is, not only for the military, but also for civilian and economic life, and now we are in a position to educate people around the world about it. International cooperation is also very important in this,” said Mor.

Span partnered with the Israeli company Cybergym, and its CEO, Ofir Hason, also attended the event.

“I consider people, their knowledge and their expertise to be the most important asset for security and defense against attacks,” Hason said.