Hello and welcome to the special podcast series, which takes a look at cybersecurity during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm Peter Balland from Technicon, and throughout this three-part series, we will be speaking with partners from the Sparta Project.

In the past, we have devoted several podcast episodes to Sparta, and if you recall, this project will improve

the way cybersecurity is implemented in the EU. From training and education to engaging the

development community, Sparta is committed to implementing lasting changes. Even though

cybersecurity and pandemics are not directly related, there are always lessons learned when something has global consequences.

Shut down, loss of commerce, and public fear are just a few of the effects both a pandemic and a large-scale cyber attack could have.

In this series, we will look at the intersection of these two vulnerable sectors of our society and what is being done on the

cybersecurity side to keep things running safely and securely.

Today we speak with Sparta coordinator, Florin Krishna.

Welcome, Florin, and tell us what was the first thing to go through your head when you heard

we were in pandemic mode.

Well, there's, the first thing is you intuitively go back to, you know, what does that

mean to, to you?

You've seen pandemics and movies.

We've been fortunate enough, and we're working with a generation of people who have

been fortunate enough that, you know, a pandemic, at least in the, in the

Western world, is something that we hadn't experienced in a while. And, you know, most that

we got was the flu pandemic, which was, which was very much described as under control.

We've heard the scares from Ebola, we've heard the scares from SARS, but these

never reached our shores, fortunately, before. So both the question of some kind of disbelief,

you know, is this, you know, the same thing as SARS and Ebola. This is going to be terrible for

...