Albania is the host of NATO’s 3rd Cyber Defense Conference, an important high-level event taking place in Tirana with the participation of delegations from the 32 member countries of the Alliance.

The conference serves as a strategic platform for the exchange of knowledge, the strengthening of cooperation, and the drafting of joint approaches to the growing challenges and threats in cyberspace. The conference is also considered an important step toward building a more resilient and secure architecture within the Alliance’s digital environment.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much,

For some reasons, this is a tall guys affair between Mark and Jean Charles and me. We need two more and we can beat everyone in basketball, I guess.

Anyhow, thank you so much for being here. It is a true honor to have so many friendly states. Nations gathered here through you, and its pleasure to host you, Mr. Assistant Secretary General. And to have heard the message from our dear friend Mark Rute. I am supposed to deliver a very long speech to you, but I am going to save you from the boredom of all this, and I am going to try to be as brief as I can, which is not something that is my virtue, but I will try. Because I am thinking that, yes, you must work hard today, but at the same time, you need some time to enjoy the city.

So, number one, I would say that governments take credit or take blame for what they do right or for what they do wrong, but governments never take any credit for what they prevent to happen. And what they prevent is not only part of their mission, but it’s an important part of their mission.

If governments would  have been judged through real data on what they prevent happening, people would have, I believe, a better opinion about them. And when it comes to cyber, it is exactly that, Investing and putting a lot of effort to prevent terrible things from happening. We know how it feels, because unlike many of you, and I hope you will never have to go through it. We went through it, and we saw ourselves in the middle of a very vicious, massive, cyber-attack which aimed at our digital infrastructure, which is our right. We invested in our digital infrastructure for a very important purpose to practically make a lib frog and leave behind a very heavy story of bribery everywhere for everything, and so, through that, we completely changed the curse of relations between the government and the people between the public services and the citizens, because we became, among the very first countries with no front offices to offer services, and we brought 95% of the services, in the pocket of the citizens, there are smartphones and people from within or outside the country can get their service right away and for free.

This was the target of a huge investment in our limited resources and a lot of time spent could have been blowing in the air, just like this. We survived that and I am proud to tell you that we have one of the best cyber walls among the NATO countries now. It is not visionary, it is just out of the basic means for surviving.

Today we suffer an average cyber-attack every three minutes, but we succeed in completely pushing back and when it comes to attacks that leave a mark, we had forty-eight in the last entire year. And forty-eight, but again, they left a mark, but they did not do any considerable damage.

So, when it comes to our state, infrastructure, being digital or physical, I repeat with pride, we are among the best. Because we have been, I guess, among the very first to combine cyber defense with artificial intelligence, It is our artificial intelligence inside the cyber wall that makes the job 24 hours seven to detect in much early stage, the potential of a harmful attack. But this is one side of the story.

The other side of the story is the private sector. We have to do a lot more, to engage the private sector, and to make them aware that, like death, that is not an unconfirmed rumor, as many of us in the Balkan’s believe about death, cyber-attack is real, and the damage that can make is real, so I’m going to tell you how it went with the financial sector, with the bank.

After we had this massive attack that we survived from a country that is targeting us regularly, but now we are much better set as I told you. We gathered the banks, and we said, listen, we are a target. We are a target of a big player, not of an easy one, so please, engage, please invest, please, let us collaborate. We are ready to give you our knowledge were ready to help you, and they took it very lightly. And then, one of them had to go through it, and they realized that this was nasty. This is nasty. So now, we can say with some relief that when it comes to the banking sector, the level of defense is high. As it is high when it comes to the energy sector, but there is much more to do, and I saw the assistant to General Nodding, which means to me that all the countries have to face this difficulty of getting the private sector on bord with a speed that is reasonable for the time we live in.

And the last point I want to make, I want to say one thing that, unlike other forces. In the space of our co-existence on this planet, we are big, but we are small. I mean, we NATO, we are big because the sum of our countries is huge. But we are small because we are very fragmented.

When it comes to cyber protection, it is not a good idea to stay apart, and it is a very good idea to join the virtual Incident Support Center, which is an initiative of NATO to gather all the countries and to make a much stronger Defense through, sharing, sharing our data, sharing our reference, sharing our inflation, this is crucial and Albania has been among the first to joint that, and I wish all the countries join it. Otherwise, will have to do it, but after having learned the hard way that is not a good idea to be a part, because there is one thing I learned from the cyber war, experts, and we had the chance to work with top, top, top, experts, and top players to strengthen our defense, that it’s very important to know the enemy, and to know the enemy’s tools, so you do not need to face it yourself if you can learn about the enemy while the enemy is attacking someone else.

So, collecting all information about the enemy’s tools and about the enemy’s innovative tools when they get in space is a must, and you cannot do it when you are separated from each other. While, when you are together, you learn and you take your measures, so that a new tool that is there will not harm you.

So, based on our cooperation with few partners, few non-NATO partners by the way we realized that while helping us, they learned for themselves what was new, on the enemy’s side, so these were my takes, but don’t forget, I’m not a general, I’m not any type of expert.   I am the only one in my government without a Ph.D. I am just an artist.

Thank you so much.