Bulgaria to join Microsoft's program against cyber attacks

Bulgaria will join Microsoft's Government Security Program (GSP) in a bid to establish an effective prevention against cyber attacks, the country's Council of Ministers decided here on Wednesday.

By joining the GSP, Bulgaria would be able to progress in computer technology and the development of information security, as well as create a reliable and effective prevention against cyber attacks, the government said in a press release.

The GSP, which was launched in 2003 and is currently used by more than 30 national governments around the world, provides services such as vulnerability and threat intelligence from Microsoft to help governments respond more effectively and efficiently to computer security incidents.

From late October to early November this year, websites of Bulgarian institutions such as the Ministry of Interior, parliament, and Central Election Commission, have experienced difficulties as a result of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Valeri Borisov, Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications, has told reporters that there was no way to count how many attacks were made against all websites in the country during the period. In one example, a website of "an important state institution" was attacked 2 billion times within 24 hours. Endit