Nordic countries urged to strengthen cyber defences together

Erik Kursetgjerde, Norway’s representative at NATO’s cyber defence division, has called for closer Nordic cooperation on cybersecurity, mbl.is reports.

Kursetgjerde spoke to Morgunblaðið in Reykjavik this summer, where he was discussing cybersecurity and Ukraine’s defences in its war with Russia. He said Nordic countries could learn from Ukrainian resilience and work together to improve their cyber defences.

Kursetgjerde described the NATO division as a body that conducts research, exercises and training. Its staff mapped Ukraine’s cybersecurity ecosystem by speaking with 21 organisations from government, the military and the private sector. They concluded that a military cyber structure alone was not enough.

“A lot rests on citizens to keep the country running, even though the military is, of course, in a key role,” he said. He said functioning financial, hospital and telecommunications systems had helped prevent chaos at the start of the war. For Iceland, which has no military, he said it was important for civilian systems and infrastructure to be prepared and keep working if something happened.

Kursetgjerde said Ukraine’s systems rely heavily on US companies, as do those in Iceland and Norway. Keeping data abroad can be useful for a country at war, he said, but can also have consequences. He cited a disruption to Starlink during a Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet that caused the attack to fail. Starlink is a US satellite network that provides internet access.

He said US support had since declined and that problems had arisen, including payments for licences from US companies. He said the reliability of those services could have significant consequences for Ukraine’s digital infrastructure and military capabilities.