The executive director of the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, ENISA, Juhan Lepassaar, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press, in Athens, Greece on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. Lepassaar said the Athens-based agency had recorded a sharp rise in cybersecurity incidents in 2024.
ENISA has led exercises and intense consultations to harden the resilience of election-related agencies in the EU for the past seven months. In an annual report for 2023, the agency noted a surge in ransomware attacks and incidents targeting public institutions. Experts warn that artificial intelligence tools are also being used to target Western voters at accelerating speed and scale with misleading or false information, including hyperrealistic video and audio clips known as deepfakes.
US and European experts are helping security agencies to try and anticipate emerging digital threats and vulnerabilities over this decade, with ENISA identifying food production, satellite management and self-driving vehicles as areas requiring attention.