Based on the experience gained in the last three years, Romania can currently sustain two major cyber attacks simultaneously at national level, Dan Cîmpean, director of the National Cyber Security Directorate (DNSC), told the Digital Innovation Summit Bucharest 2026 (DISB 2026) on Tuesday, according to Agerpres.
„I received just this morning, during a very interesting and very important meeting for us as a Directorate, a question about how many major cyber attacks we can sustain as a state. The answer I want to give directly and openly is two. We can, at this point in time, based on our experience over the last three years, say that we are able to sustain two simultaneous major cyber attacks nationwide. Is it a big number, is it a small number? I say it's a reasonably good figure compared to other states that have almost collapsed at the critical infrastructure level the moment they had a major attack. Our ecosystem has shown that we can manage, at a satisfactory level, two major attacks. So it's a figure that should make us happy and worry at the same time. We are heading towards a period when these major attacks could become the norm, such as „Apele Române”, Electrica Distribuție, Rompetrol, the 26 hospitals that were hit by a ransomware attack a few years ago,” explained the head of the DNSC.
Mr. Cîmpean also pointed out that the private sector plays an important role in the development of digital technologies to counter cybercriminals.
„These are extremely complicated, extremely interesting times. We don't need to watch TV or watch social media or read newsletters to realize this. We are at this point in time at a point of convergence between digital technologies that are being adopted at an extremely accelerated pace, something beyond any expectation, the way our organizations are testing, deploying, using these digital technologies. We live in days when malicious actors coming from state areas, coming from cybercrime areas, are more and more active, more and more present, and they are using these new technologies in a systematically disciplined and professional way (...) I invite you to follow carefully the signals coming from the European Union, from Brussels, on the regulatory side, the way in which the European Union is reformulating everything that means the digital field, the field of cyber security, but at the same time to read very carefully the new US cyber security strategy published this weekend in Washington. There are some extremely interesting trends there. There is a very strong emphasis on the private sector,” the expert said.
According to the source, in the cyber domain, no individual state or organization stands a chance if it does not work together and remains isolated.
„Obviously, in order to remain resilient at the level of cyber infrastructure, at the level of society, the economy, the state, we need all the resources we can muster. We need to build this cyber resilience gradually and over time. I think we have many lessons to learn, from our neighbors, from Ukraine in particular. We are doing it at Directorate level. I encourage all of you participating in this impressive event to discuss, to collaborate more, both among yourselves as organizations, as experts, as specialists in the field or as entrepreneurs, but also with neighboring states and EU Member States. In the cyber field, you have no chance as an individual organization or as a state in isolation. You have to put all your resources together - public, private, academia, partners and international allies”, said Dan Cîmpean.
In the specialist's view, the human resource in IT is key to keeping the industry safe.
„One last point that I wanted to mention and touch on, because it's a point of attention or painful or a point that we're happy about, depending on which category you are in - human resource. We are, fortunately, one of the countries of the European Union that has the chance to have a reasonably large number of brains, a reasonably large number of specialists, in the IT field, in the field of digital neo-technology, in the very specialized field of cyber security. We are still at the stage where we have enough brains. I don't know how you organize and work in your institutions, but I can tell you that we at the Directorate have thought about investing a lot in juniors. They don't like the word juniors, but that's what we call them, I mean, debutants. In December and January, we recruited 37 students on work contracts. They haven't finished their studies yet, they're middle-schooled, but they're an absolutely phenomenal generation. Work with the university, work with the research institutes and encourage them to come into this field, which is very exciting, very lucrative and will give them a phenomenal career outlook for the next 10-20 years. We will not get bored,” the DNSC director said.