A critical undersea data cable stretching 1,173 kilometers between Helsinki, Finland, and Rostock, Germany, serves as the only direct data communication link from Finland to Central Europe.
Interestingly, this cable runs along a similar path to the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which were mysteriously sabotaged and suffered explosions in September 2022.
Recent incidents have raised security concerns over undersea infrastructure. Finnish authorities previously investigated the Chinese vessel NewNew Polar Bear after suspecting it of deliberately damaging submarine cables in the Baltic Sea last year.
However, Samuli Bergström, a director at Finland’s National Cyber Security Center, remarked that it’s plausible the cable could have broken due to natural circumstances. “Cables lying on the seafloor are exposed to weather phenomena, shipping, and require constant maintenance,” he explained to Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat on Monday.
This event occurred just two days after a Russian spy ship was escorted away from a region containing crucial communication cables in the Irish Sea, adding to the mounting concerns about the safeguarding of vital undersea networks.
Leave a Reply