By: Van
Soul Addey
Europe needs stronger
cooperation between member states, public authorities and businesses to respond
to increasingly sophisticated hybrid attacks, according to European Commission
Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna
Virkkunen.
Virkkunen made the remarks
during a visit to Finland, where she met with the Finnish Border Guard in
Helsinki to discuss its role in strengthening the security of critical
infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.
During the visit, Virkkunen
highlighted the Baltic Cable Hub, established under the European Union’s Action
Plan on Cable Security and co-funded by the EU. The initiative brings together
five EU member states to strengthen Europe’s ability to detect threats to
undersea cable infrastructure and improve its capacity to respond to incidents
and carry out repairs.
Virkkunen said the
cross-border approach being applied to the protection of Baltic Sea cables
should also be adopted to improve Europe’s ability to detect and counter
drones.
The Finnish Border Guard has
launched a project with Elisa and Sensofusion that uses a 5G network for drone
detection and countering. Virkkunen visited Elisa to observe the technology in
operation.
She described the
cooperation between the Finnish Border Guard, Elisa and Sensofusion as an
example of the type of public-private and cross-border approach that could be
expanded at the European level.
