Page 147 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

ALEXANDRU GEORGESCU, ADRIAN VICTOR VEVERA, CARMEN ELENA CÎRNU: A CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION
PERSPECTIVE ON COUNTER-TERRORISM IN SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

There must also be support for trust building measures between the local communities and
state authorities, and between the business sectors operating CI and the state authorities, for
the smoothing of internal CIP processes.

5 Conclusions

The South-Eastern European region features a challenging security environment in which a
mix of factors threaten security outcomes as well as the cooperation necessary for resolving
crises stemming from growing interdependencies. This article advances the view that a host
of issues, including those related to certain terrorist threats, could be ameliorated through the
implementation of Critical Infrastructure Protection frameworks in the region, and the pursuit
of resilience in the functioning of critical infrastructure systems such as energy, transport,
finance and others. These systems are interdependent not only nationally, but also across state
boundaries, making cooperation necessary to address the risks, vulnerabilities and threats
stemming from their operation. Terrorists may target these critical infrastructures to maxi-
mize the damage dealt and, increasingly, they have tools such as cyberattacks at their disposal
and the exploitation of cybercrime in order to implement potentially devastating attacks with
minimum investment and risk. The logic of “grey zone actions” with difficult attribution, un-
der the threshold of a military response, which characterizes the murky cyber threat landscape
makes such attacks against critical infrastructure a prime concern.

The article detailed a few possibilities for implementation and cooperation in the region,
given that the EU Member States already have National Critical Infrastructure Protection
systems aligned with EU norms and practices, along with a level of cross-border interaction
and coordination capability between decision-makers. There are also other sources of good
practice in CIP, giving rise to significant permutations in terms of cooperation and burden
sharing for the assistance of the states in the Western Balkans (UN, 2019). We have focused
on NATO and the EU because of the regional synergies and natural interdependencies, as well
as the relative similarities between countries in South-Eastern Europe.

The object of this article was not to assess the state of CIP efforts in countries such as Roma-
nia, Bulgaria or Slovenia, or the existing frameworks in the Western Balkan states outside the
EU, but to highlight the potential of cooperation for working towards a minimum viable level
of regional CIP process performance and coordination ability that transcends the difficulties
of political relationships or projects such as EU accession. A role should be played by NATO
and by the United States as originator and constant developer of the CIP framework, but the
EU is the only actor cooperating with all of the states in the region for the time being.

Moving forward, it is important to assess the current situation and to find a politically ac-
ceptable mechanism, in the long term, for CIP capacity building. This must focus part of the
scarce security resources and decision-maker attention on the task of increasing resilience in
the face of regional security trends and anticipated development in the critical infrastructure
landscape, with impact also on wider European security.

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