Finland Muscles its arms for combating cyber attacks

Finland is beefing up its defences amid the risk of cyberattacks, disinformation and espionage from Moscow.

There is a unease situation among Finnish security agencies, government departments and Helsinki residents about the Kremlin’s next steps after its invasion of Ukraine and what could they expect next.

That intelligence report from the agency, which said that state-sponsored cyberespionage was one of its largest digital threats, adding that the country was a target of continual attempts at cyberespionage, with no prospect of such operations subsiding, even in the long term.

Indeed, e-mail accounts belonging to some Finnish lawmakers were compromised during a cyberattack on parliament last year. Supo later attributed those attacks to APT31, a hacking group linked to China.

Combating state-sponsored cyberespionage aimed at civilian society is one of Supo’s main responsibilities. And the security agency says that Finnish authorities and the business community including telecom operators, internet service providers and universities are already preparing for potential threats and sharing information.

While preventing civilian cyberattacks falls to Supo, defusing similar threats toward the military is in the defence forces’ bailiwick. And, at the start of the month, the Ministry of Defence began a new program to strengthen national cybersecurity.