In the first five months of 2023, there were 15 cases of advanced persistent threat (APT) campaigns against Croatia, which means a rise in such cyber attacks, the Croatian Security-Intelligence Agency (SOA) head, Daniel Markic, said at the SK@UT conference in Zagreb on Tuesday.

The first SK@UT conference was organised by SOA to bring together representatives of institutions and companies specialised in cyber security and professors and experts in this field.

In his keynote speech, Markic said that the event shows “the strategic importance which Croatia’s state leadership attaches to cyber security.”

He recalled that in 2019, the government gave a nod to SOA to build, in cooperation with other agencies in the security and intelligence system, a centre for cyber security of SOA.

The construction of the centre was the first step and the fending the cyber space against threats and attacks requires active and permanent cooperation of state bodies, the academic community and the the private sector.

He added that the most visible project of the protection of the national cyber space represents SK@UT – “cyber umbrella that shields over 60 state bodies, agencies and entities from cyber attacks.”

The government’s decision in April 2021 enabled the broadening of this protection outside the government sector to shield operators of key utilities in the energy and transport sectors and to other elements n the critical infrastructure, according to Markic.

The primary task of this “cyber umbrella” is to fend off advanced persistent threat (APT) campaigns and ransomware.

We manage to detect such attack at the initial stage, Markic said.

In 2021, SK@UT detected 14 state-sponsored cyber attacks, in 2022, it detected 19 such attacks, and year to date, we have already detected 15  state-sponsored cyber attacks, he informed the conference.

The targets of such campaigns are all the data the state has at its disposal, he said adding that NATO and EU member-stats are in particular “attractive” targets for such attacks, Markic said adding that APT and similar attacks come from Russia and groups associated with Russia.

A key to the success in the fight against those attacks is to share information between the stakeholders concerned, he added.

In this sense, he mentioned a pilot-project of the European Commission for cyber crises management which SOA is coordinating with the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

As part of this project, a grant of €1.5 million was awarded for upgrading the resistance of SK@UT community.

I this project, Croatia is among three most successful EU member-states, Markic said.

More and more APT cyber threats

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at the conference that his cabinet full supported SOA plans.

Following Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, European countries have been facing an increased activity in APT cyber  threats. This is a serious challenge, and we are supposed to respond to it efficiently, he said.