2023-12-05
Consid in Svenska dagbladet op-ed: “Learn from Ukraine – Strengthen our Cyber Defense.”
Sweden must take the cybersecurity threat seriously. According to the government, educating the population is a prioritized area, but so far, words have not translated into action. It is time to introduce continuous national stress tests in the form of hackathons. This is written by Yegor Aushev, the architect behind the Ukrainian cyber defense, and Peter Hellgren in SvD Debatt.
“The Ukraine War has taught us a lot about digital warfare. Despite intense, harsh, and frequent attacks, the superpower Russia has not managed to crack Ukraine’s vital digital infrastructure. The digital passport is functional, government online services are not down, the equivalent of Swish has not been offline for a single day, electricity is working, water is available, heating is present, and the internet is intact. This, in itself, has allowed Ukraine to resist on the battlefield, dominate the information war, and perhaps most importantly, strengthen the morale of its citizens.
No individual state can independently protect its entire population from an adversary like Russia. The country can disrupt the internet and halt power supply. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses, families, and individuals to understand how to prevent attacks and stop intrusions,” begin Peter Hellgren and Yegor Aushev in their op-ed on Svenska dagbladet.
Sweden, and the rest of the world, has much to learn from how Ukraine has managed its cybersecurity since 2014. In the case of Sweden, much of it revolves around naivety. Swedes and the internet exhibit a naivety from the younger generation that could ultimately be both risky and seriously damaging to Sweden’s cybersecurity.
“The older half, born from the 20s to even the 70s, see it as likely. Just over half of those born in the 80s, 90s, and 00s see a cyber attack that disrupts the internet as likely.”
Sweden needs to view cybersecurity as a threshold effect. Only then can it achieve the level of security required to withstand a country like Russia on the cyber battlefield.
“It is a question of civil defense that is far more important than being reduced to some kind of theme week by the authorities. It requires active efforts among both companies and private individuals. It requires practice, education, testing, practice, practice, and more practice. The cyber defense of Sweden concerns us all,” conclude the authors in their article.
Read the ful op-ed here.
Cyber Unit Technologies in partnership with Consid
Read more about this