Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Challenges and Safe Development James Appathurai emphasized this Wednesday that Albania will have the help and support of NATO in relation to the cyber attacks that our country has suffered in recent months from Iran. 

In a joint conference with the Minister of Defense, Niko Peleshi in Tirana, the NATO official said that he and his team came to Tirana to see the situation closely and to make a better coordination to help Albania.

"All NATO countries recognize the attack on Albania and certainly support it in this direction. This is the message that the General Secretary gave to Prime Minister Rama in the last meeting. Of course, I wanted to emphasize the many efforts that the Albanian state has made to cope with these attacks that have been made. Of course, the help came from NATO, it came at the technical level from different NATO countries, but also at the individual level from different structures. My team and I have come here for several different reasons, but first the main reason is to look at the situation and to make a coordination of the allies and NATO headquarters regarding the cyber attack that happened, to see the long-term needs that Albania has in order to build a defense network against these cyber attacks and Albania is taking steps forward in this field", said Appathurai, once again emphasizing the Alliance's defense in this battle. 

During the joint conference, Minister Niko Peleshi clarified the purpose of the Alliance team's visit to Albania.

"This team comes to our country to provide assistance in relation to cyber issues, familiarization with the current situation as well as the needs and opportunities for addressing these issues in the future. After the cyber attacks on the information technology systems and infrastructure of the Albanian state, already identified by origin, the reaction and response of the country's specialized structures in close cooperation with the allied countries was immediate. These attacks were intended to completely destroy the systems and platforms of government services, but they did not achieve the goal of wiping out and destroying all of our information technology systems. The Albanian government reacted immediately after providing irrefutable evidence about the origin of the attack by immediately cutting off relations with Iran. Our allies strongly condemned the attacks and came out on Albania's side through various statements or with the approach of specialized assistance in the cyber field. Currently, after nearly 5 weeks of intensive work, it has become possible to restore various systems and platforms to the service of the citizens of our country", said Peleshi. 

The NATO team has arrived in Albania to assist the government on a political and technical level after the cyber attacks. The visit comes after Prime Minister Edi Rama's communication with the Secretary General of the Alliance Jens Stoltenberg. The delegation headed by the deputy assistant to the Secretary General of NATO for challenges and safe development James Appathurai first met with Defense Minister Niko Peleshi. Also, the NATO team will meet with representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, as well as with representatives of the AKSHI (National Information Society Agency).