­­The government’s IT agency deals with about 100 cyber-attacks a month, attempts to retrieve information from the government’s online infrastructure.

Cedric Mallia, who heads Mita’s agency’s computer emergency response team (Cert) that monitors government servers, said most of the attacks originated from foreign sources.

He believes the increased interaction with international Certs had helped strengthen the agency’s monitoring, because the local team was sometimes alerted to security issues by its foreign equivalents.

Mr Mallia was speaking during the 24th global Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (First) conference, which this year was held recently in Malta.

More than 500 delegates from 63 countries, including international experts from Nato, Facebook and Google, took part in the First conference, considered one of the largest information security conferences worldwide.

The main theme that featured in several discussions held during this weeklong event was the adoption of cross-boundary cooperation to achieve the universal goal of cyber-security.

“We’re living in a hypo-connective world, where we’re connected to online systems all the time, everywhere. The main challenge remains to continue providing security and protect internet users without removing these connectivity benefits,” Ray Stanton, from BT Group said.

Steve Adegbite, from the First steering committee, said attackers come up with new techniques all the time and they focus on individual users, rather than security professionals. This called for higher awareness among the public.

“The weakest links are individual internet users who are not aware of the cyber threats posed by phishing and scamming.

“We’re currently seeing more attacks addressed to a specific audience,” Rodney Naudi, from Mita, said, adding there had been a surge in precision targeting, such as phishing e-mails in Maltese.

“People need to be aware of the implications of a simple click,” Mr Naudi said.

He believes this conference helped local Certs reaffirm that they “are not alone.”

“We might be small, but we experience the same threats that larger countries face,” he said.

Five simple steps to avoid getting hacked

• Never give out your username or password in an e-mail

• If you receive something you are not expecting, even if it is from someone you know, always verify the origin of the e-mail by contacting the person whose name appears in the sender’s box

• Do not click on links that you did not ask for

• Update your computer system on a regularl basis

• Install anti-virus software

For further tips, visit www.getsafeonline.com.