Tuesday and Wednesday 8.–9.10. the intensive phase of the Tieto24 exercise was organized in Finland, where more than 700 people from more than 180 companies and organizations participated.
This year, the exercise focused on the challenges of import dependencies and logistics flows in the energy sector. In the simulated environment, they also practiced reacting to disinformation spreading online during the disruption and holding information sessions.
Tieto exercises have been organized since the late 1970s, when the Finnish Defense Forces organized tele-exercises in case of telecommunication problem situations. Currently, the Huoltovarmuuskeskus is responsible for the exercise organized every other year. In practice, the exercise is organized by Digipooli, a member of the Maintenance Safety Organization.
The task of Traficom’s Cyber Security Center is to create a situational picture so that companies and authorities stay on the map in the event of disruptions. The CEO of Ficom, who is part of Digipool’s management team Elina Usa stressed at the press conference that the condition for handling this task is the adequacy of funding in the future.
Weak links in the chain as targets
The power grid is so extensive that Caruna’s Jörgen Dahlqvistin according to it, it cannot be completely protected, even if the supervision intentionally aims to avoid problems caused to it in advance. Monitoring also helps to show afterwards what really happened. This reduces the possibility of influencing information.
“Sabotage is no different from a technical fault: part of the system is out of order. If the system is fault-tolerant, electricity can be returned to other routes and the effect will be short-lived,” said Dahlqvist.
One form of preparedness is to take care of the ability to repair detected faults and to ensure that spare parts are in stock.
In addition to physical security, it is now necessary to take into account the securing of digital connections and the smooth cooperation of different actors through them, despite the fact that the connections are subject to usual disturbances or intentional harm.
Energy supply is also an enabler of digital connections in the subcontracting chain. Head of the Service Security Center’s preparedness planning unit Jarna Hartikainen According to
“There, the aim is to find the weak links where there are no operational models yet,” Hartikainen describes the method of intentionally causing disruptions.