According to ANCOM’s Report on significant incidents affecting the security of electronic communications networks and services in 2022, the number of security incidents decreased last year by 17%, to 341 incidents affecting approximately 6.9 million connections. An important decrease is registered in the case of fixed telephony services, i.e. 80% fewer connections affected, but also in the case of fixed internet, the number of connections involved in security incidents being 76% lower compared to 2021.
According to the notifications received by ANCOM in 2022, the number of significant security incidents keeps a downward trend, decreasing by approximately 17% compared to 2021. Thus, 341 incidents were registered, compared to 410 in 2021 and 575 in 2020, respectively. Overall, the total number of affected connections is approximately 6.9 million, while the overall average value is over 20 thousand connections affected by a single incident.
Last year, more than half of the incidents (188) were triggered by a power supply problem.
Connections affected
Mobile telephony and SMS services were the most affected (3.9 million connections affected), followed by mobile internet and mobile data transmission (2.6 million connections affected).
Regarding fixed telephony services, in 2022, there is a significant decrease compared to the previous year, with approximately 80% fewer connections affected. The decrease in the number of affected connections is also registered in the case of fixed internet, with 76% fewer connections affected than in 2021. For audio-visual media retransmission services, the number of affected connections was 94% lower than in the previous year. This decrease in the number of affected connections stems from a significantly lower number of incidents that occurred in 2022 and affected the above-mentioned services. Looking at the developments over the last three years, one can see a relatively downward trend, that is natural as solutions are gradually implemented to remedy incidents and prevent their recurrence, which is closely watched by ANCOM every year.
Geographical distribution
The incidents affected one or more counties simultaneously: 181 incidents affected one county each, 154 affected connections in 2-10 counties simultaneously, 3 incidents affected 11 to 30 counties and 3 incidents impacted connections nationwide. The distribution of incidents at national level shows that most incidents (42) affected Teleorman county, and the counties where the fewest incidents were recorded were Braila (1 incident) and Vaslui (2 incidents).
By county, the most incidents that were caused by power supply problems occurred in Teleorman (31), followed by Dolj (20) and Gorj (19). The counties with the fewest reported electrical incidents were Bacau, Bihor, Brasov, Galati and Vaslui, where only one electrical incident was recorded, whereas in Braila and Satu-Mare there were no electrical incidents.
Incidents related to power supply problems, by county (2022)
Resources affected
Regarding the resources affected, 140 incidents affected resources at the support level (elements supporting the functioning of the equipment, such as those used for power supply, temperature monitoring and control systems, electrical installations), 171 incidents affected resources at the logical level (software elements of the equipment and/or resources) and 33 incidents affected resources at the physical level (hardware components of equipment and/or resources).
The most affected resources belong to the categories: transmission environments (185 incidents), base stations and mobile controllers (126 incidents), equipment in transmission nodes (22 incidents) and routers and IP switches (17 incidents).
Duration of incidents
In 2022, the total duration of reported incidents was over 2,657 hours, up from 2,277 hours in 2021. The average duration of an incident also increased from about 5 1/2 hours in 2021 to approximately 8 hours in 2022.
It is noteworthy that last year one reported incident was caused by a cyber-attack aiming a partner of an electronic communications provider in Romania, which lasted for 10 days.
Although the number of incidents was lower in 2022, their overall duration was longer, as some of them were caused by weather phenomena and the time needed to fix the problem was longer.
ANCOM Report
ANCOM’s Report on the significant incidents that affected the security of electronic communications networks and services in 2022 is based on the information made available by the providers and is available here.