Ömer Fatih Sayan, Chairman of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), said in his speech at the “e-Safe Cybersecurity Summit” hosted by BTK that a secure environment for the internet and information technologies must be created in order to benefit from the advantages of the digital economy.

Pointing to the importance of increasing cybersecurity in the virtual environment, Sayan noted that when looking at DDoS attacks worldwide in 2016, attempts of 100 gigabytes per second had become frequently encountered, and that last year two attacks close to 1 terabyte took place.

Noting that 2016 was a year in which attacks against Turkey and internal and external threats increased in the cyber world as well, Sayan said:

“In 2016, denial-of-service attacks increased sixfold compared to the previous year. The number of SOMEs increased by 40 percent last year, and as of today, such teams have been established in 585 institutions. In our vulnerability notifications to institutions and organizations through USOM, there was an approximately 20-fold increase in 2016 compared to the previous year, and a ninefold increase in alarms, warnings and general security announcements. We are taking measures by identifying internet addresses intended for stealing our citizens’ credit card and account information and spreading malicious software. In this context, the number of sites we identified increased approximately twofold compared to the previous year.”

“6 million cybersecurity workers will be needed in 2019”
Pointing out that it is impossible to speak of absolute security in the internet environment, Sayan expressed that one must always remain highly vigilant against cyber attacks and constantly improve especially preventive measures.

Stating that they carry out work within specific programs and processes rather than everyday measures to ensure cybersecurity, Sayan reported that within the scope of cyber capacity building they are focusing on increasing the number of senior cybersecurity experts at USOM and improving the human resources of SOMEs in terms of quantity and quality.

Sayan, stating that published reports show that 6 million cybersecurity workers will be needed worldwide in 2019, said: “This means a need for tens of thousands of experts when we look at our country’s scale. We are continuing our work to meet the necessary need by doing our planning in this direction. We aim to meet the need for experts by revealing the potential in our young people, who have a high aptitude for technology.”