Today took place the closure of The International Conference on Cyber Security and Privacy
20/05/2019Today took place the closure of fourth edition of the International Conference on Cyber Security and Privacy, organized by the community Cyber Security and Privacy and UBT. This event has been supported by the Ministry of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
On the second day of the conference, UBT Rector, prof. dr. Edmond Hajrizi emphasized that Kosovo fulfills the conditions to be a role model in the cyber security and privacy policy. Among others he underlined that the country has capacities and highly committed young people that are working in this direction.
“There is still much to be done owing to the fact that cyber security is increasingly becoming a concerning issue for the citizens and the emerging risks must be seriously taken into account. Indeed, we need to set up partnerships with those who have the capacity, so that citizens can live in a safe environment. Kosovo has young people who will work in this direction and the concept for a safe population must be created.” – highlighted Hajrizi.
Hajrizi added that this conference should serve as a forum for field experts, people from academia, politics, science, where they may meet and discuss topics of keen interest, such as cyber security.
Meanwhile, this year’s edition of the conference was enriched with the arrival of renowned hacker, Benjamin Kunz Mejri.
He said that digitalization is affecting all countries. Due to that, Mejri pointed out that the collaboration among people who are responsible for this is quite important and said that it is important to organize such conferences.
“Kosovo is at the point where it is moving and growing more and more, so it is important to organize such conferences, because if people come together then they will share their experiences. I am delighted to be here for the first time in Kosovo, and at the same time, I’m willing to contribute to the country because the aspect of digitization for us, as cyber security researchers, creates a community system.” – said Benjamin Mejri.
Talking about the concerns of the citizens and their concern over the control of personal data, the representative of the Directorate for Personal Data Protection in Macedonia, Bilijana Volceska emphasized that the percentage of people seeking professional help is increasing, due to crimes of false profiles in social networks.
“In the data protection authorities, nearly 60 percent of the complaints we receive, are related to social media and various networks where people seek help from us, because of crimes of false profiles or because someone has posted their photos or videos and noteworthy information about them. The number is becoming increasingly high, and as matter of fact, we have to help our citizens to remove false profiles. However, it’s a quite demanding job to carry out the respective procedures in order to find the wrongdoers” – she said.
Director of Legal Department at the State Agency for Personal Data Protection, Valon Kryeziu indicated that Kosovo is working continuously on implementing the European Data Privacy Regulation.
“GDPR came into power last year and has been one of the criteria for Kosovo’s way to European integration. As a result there has been created an inter-institutional group. The aim of this venture is to harmonize and draft a law that is in relevance with European Union regulations. There have been put on a lot of efforts and at the same time have been incorporated aspects related to personal data protection.” – pointed out Kryeziu.
The Representative of the Regulatory Authority of Electronic and Postal Communications in Kosovo, Shpend Lutfiu, said that more should be done in terms of cyber security. According to him, this activity has highly contributed to raise awareness among people. Nevertheless, as he says, there is still a lot to be done on technical issues of security and privacy.
“We have access to intelligence services concerned with threats. I highly encourage the IT community to work harder in this issue.” – emphasized Lutfiu.
There have been elaborated many findings related to the field of cyber security by experts, Jean Pierlax, Mohammad Khreesha, Yassine Aboukir, Benjamin Kunz and Meridian Miftari.
The fourth edition of the International Conference on Cyber Security and Privacy was an event that welcomed numerous government and individual speakers, who discussed about the challenges and provided solutions in the field of cyber security. Part of this conference became a large number of participants who attended the discussions regarding the new EU Regulation on Cyber Security, GDPR, Privacy Violations, Privacy and Social Media, Ethical Hacking, etc.