Romania’s small and medium-sized enterprises remain exposed to cyberattacks, while the country’s digital infrastructure trails most of Europe, according to Mihnea Rădulescu, chief executive of CloudXEdge and vice president for digital infrastructure at Liberty Global in Central and Eastern Europe. He argues that Romania needs to speed up the modernisation of its digital infrastructure, both in the public and private sectors, if it is to keep pace with its European partners.
The pressure is being driven by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. According to the discussion, AI is changing how much processing power is needed, how cloud services are designed, and how the wider economy operates. It is also altering how risks are managed, a challenge that falls heavily on smaller firms that have limited budgets and technical teams to protect their systems. For these companies, the gap between their exposure to attacks and their ability to defend against them is widening as the technology evolves.
Rădulescu’s comments come against a backdrop of weak productivity across the Romanian economy. A study by the Romanian think tank CPAG, reported by Economedia, found that companies in Romania remain far less productive than their Western counterparts. The study notes that the country is losing the advantage it once held in cheap labour, because wages and employer costs have grown faster than productivity. In other words, Romanian firms are no longer competing mainly on low pay, and they have not yet built the efficiency that would replace it.
CPAG’s conclusion is that Romanian companies must invest more in technology, automation and activities with higher added value if the economy is to continue closing the gap with Western European states. The study frames this as a condition for sustained growth rather than a choice, since the cheap-labour model that supported earlier expansion is becoming harder to maintain. Investment in digital tools is presented as one of the main routes to that transition.
Taken together, the two perspectives point to a common challenge. Upgrading digital infrastructure and improving cyber protection are presented as conditions for raising productivity, not as separate issues. For smaller companies, which make up a large share of Romanian business, investment in technology and security is the route through which they could compete more strongly and reduce their vulnerability to attacks. Whether they can afford that investment, and how quickly the public and private sectors move to support it, remains the central question raised by the discussion.