Slovak legislation as an example for Europe

Director of the National Security Authority Roman Konečný received the Executive Director of the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity Juhan Lepassaar. During his two-day visit, he held meetings with representatives of the National Cyber Security Centre SK-CERT, representatives of operators of the basic service, public administration and the media.

The main topic was the NIS 2 Directive, which was approved by the European Union at the end of 2022 and will be transposed by the Member States into national legislation in the coming months and years. In particular, Brussels hopes to increase collective resilience to threats in cyberspace.

While some countries are facing major changes, it was Slovakia that Lepassaar identified at the press conference as a possible inspiration for the legislative frameworks of other member states. In particular, he highlighted the level of risk management or information exchange.

In fact, the National Security Authority has already applied a significant degree of implementation of its principles in the previous NIS 1 directive in the Cybersecurity Act No. 69/2018. Nevertheless, Slovakia is also facing significant changes, which the NSA is already actively working on with partners from all sectors.

“The Slovak Republic and our cyber law are set up in such a way that the new directive will not bring us dramatic changes,” the Director of the National Cyber Security Centre SK-CERT Rastislav Janota explained at the joint press conference.

For example, the volume of regulated sectors will change to almost 10,000 entities. In particular, manufacturing, which has not been under such scrutiny so far, will be added.

The ENISA director also spoke about the impact of the Russian aggression in Ukraine on EU Member States. The Union’s countries have seen an increase in cyber threats over the past 11 months. These were mostly denial of service (DDoS) attacks or disinformation campaigns.

He went on to assess the Union’s level of resilience, which he described as good, although he still saw room for improvement. He highlighted the cooperation between countries that can improve security in the Community.