Denmark’s intelligence community says the country still remains at a high level of threat from cyber attacks.
It is “highly probable” that cyber criminals will attempt to steal data and extort Danish organisations, the Danish Civil Protection Agency (Styrelsen for Samfundssikkerhed) has concluded in a new threat assessment.
“Very high” or meget høj, the term used by the agency, is the highest level on its five-step scale.
“The cyber threat against Denmark is serious,” the minister for the area, Torsten Schack Pedersen, told reporters after the agency released the assessment via a press statement.
“Danish authorities, businesses and members of the public are being subjected to cyber attacks every single day. Attacks that come from state and non-state actors alike,” he said.
The director of the Civil Protection Agency, Laila Reenberg, stated that “we are all at risk of being hit by a cyber attack.”
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However, people and organisations that work in areas such as foreign politics and security are at heightened risk, she said.
“The level of threat against us is unchanged but the hackers are constantly changing the ways they attack our systems,” she said.
Recent cyberattacks saw a series of Danish local and national authorities as well as organisations on the receiving end of cyber attacks in the lead up to the local elections. The attacks were claimed by a pro-Russian group.
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Tuesday’s announcement also detailed the introduction of separate threat assessment levels for distinct types of cyber threat.
For instance, the threat of data theft and extortion against Danish organisations is considered to be very high.
Other types of cyber attack include attempted ransomware attacks, in which IT systems are encrypted and made inaccessible before a ransom is demanded; as well as online scams and DDoS attacks.
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks halt access to a website by overloading its servers with traffic.
The number of ransomware attacks on Danish companies, authorities and organisations was at a record level last year, the agency said.
However, there is still no threat of cyber terror attacks on Denmark, it also concluded.