ZITiS is the new German Government cyber unit in wake of terror attacks

The German Government announced last week the creation of a new cyber security unit named ZITiS to tackle terrorists online in a wake of terror attacks.

The fear of a terror attack is pushing every government and international law enforcement agencies in an additional effort to tackle the activity of the ISIS radical group online.

The German government has announced the creation of a new cyber security unit that will be operational early next year. The new cyber unit will be composed of around 400 civil servants.

This is one of the initiatives promoted by the German Government in response to the recent terror attacks.

The German Government, like many others, fears to be vulnerable the terror attacks and it is aware that monitoring of online activity is crucial to support the investigations on terror cells active in the country.

“The move is part of a list of measures to boost security in response to recent terror attacks that raised deep concerns about Germany’s vulnerability to Islamist violence.” reads a blog post published on the GlobalGovernmentForum.com.

The news of the creation of the new cyber unit was confirmed last week by the federal interior minister Thomas de Maizière who is calling for a “technology offensive.”

The new cyber unit named the Central Office for Information in Security Sphere (‘Zentrale Stelle für Informationstechnik im Sicherheitsbereich (ZITiS)), will support German security agencies by developing “methods, products, and strategies to fight criminality and terrorism on the internet.”

The ZITiS will be also focused on the monitoring of the Dark Web, the staff of the new cyber units will include experts in the monitoring of “darknet.” The experts are concerned about the abuses of Darknets, terrorists could exploit them to cover communications or to acquire illegal weapons.

The German authorities are concerned about Germans with dual nationality that fight for militant Islamist groups. The German Government is evaluating new anti-terror legislation that will consider the act of “promoting terrorism” a criminal offense.

De Maiziere announced the intention of the Government to speed up the deportation of foreign criminals. The Government of Berlin will keep an additional €2bn funding for the federal police between 2015 and 2020, it will also assign extra personnel, equipment and surveillance powers for the police.

The German Government will likely adopt further measures, including the loose of the doctor-patient confidentiality

“In three major cases the perpetrators were found to have been mentally unstable: The Ansbach bomber who killed himself and wounded 15 others at a music festival last month; the gunman who killed nine people in a Munich shopping mall – also last month; and the Germanwings pilot who deliberately crashed an airliner in the French Alps in 2015.” reported globalgovernmentforum.com.

“The duty of doctors to respect patient confidentiality is enshrined in the German constitution, and German privacy laws are very strict.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – German Government, ZITiS)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.