The Republic of Srpska

  The Republic of Srpska Police Director, Mr Siniša Kostrešević, together with Ms Elena Gherta, SEPCA Regional Coordinator, Project Manager, Criminal Intelligence Service of Austria, and Mr Daniel Cuciurianu, Project Manager, iPROCEEDS-2 Project of the Council of Europe, opened the Conference on’’SEPCA Countries in the Fight Against Cybercrime’’ which is held in Banja Luka.   "We have organized a series of events with the aim of improving cooperation in the field of all security aspects in the territory covered by the Southeast Europe Police Chiefs Association- SEPCA. This is an important opportunity to exchange experiences, modules and methods of work, in order to raise the fight against cybercrime, as well as work on cyber security to a higher level," said Director Kostrešević. He stated that it was necessary to continuously improve and exchange experiences in the field of countering cybercrime, in order to counter negative phenomena successfully, since the cyberspace is such structure on which new threats could appear on daily basis. Director Kostrešević mentioned that cybercrime was a global threat, and that in the Republic of Srpska there were dozens of attacks through various "ransomware", which are regularly one of the most frequent forms of cybercrime. Our goal at the conference was to exchange experience and data related to these attacks, but also to discuss cyber-terrorism, i.e. the methods of how certain groups of people use modern technologies to cause anxiety among citizens," said Director Kostrešević. He reminded that bomb reports in clinical centres, schools and other facilities were frequent lately, and that it was one example of cyber-terrorism. According to him, the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior was the first one in the region to recognise the importance of cyber investigations, and therefore the Department for Countering Cybercrimewas established in 2007. The conference is organised by the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior, in cooperation with the EU and iPROCEEDS-2 Project of the Council of Europe, and the Federal Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Austria.  The conference is attended by police officers specialised in coun