The CDU’s Economic Council is urgently calling upon the federal government and the states to provide better security measures for municipalities against cyberattacks. This demand comes from a position paper, which News magazine “Focus” quoted and which is slated to be handed over to the federal government. Wolfgang Steiger, the General Secretary of the Economic Council, told “Focus” that digitalization of administrative services must not happen without concurrently guaranteeing their security and availability.
To achieve this, the paper insists that the federal and state governments must dedicate multi-year funding for staffing and maintenance. Furthermore, the paper stresses that municipalities should not be burdened with new obligations without adequate financial backing. Specifically, the association demands that local governments future-proof critical data so that it can be fully restored following a hacker attack. Additionally, town halls must regularly conduct simulations to practice how they can maintain operations if their computer systems fail. Steiger asserted that a digitized state must remain functional even when its IT systems are under pressure.
The Economic Council plans to deliver this paper to the Federal Minister for Digital Affairs, Karsten Wildberger (CDU), in November. He also urged the CDU and SPD coalition to quickly finalize ongoing initiatives. These projects include “CyberGovSecure,” designed to better protect the IT infrastructure of federal and state administrations, and the planned “Cyberdome,” which aims to detect cyberattacks early on. The paper notes that while these protection services exist, they are currently not yet implemented on a nationwide scale.
