– It’s a risk we will live with. But how much should we care? Should we let this kind of activities affect us or think: “Yes, okay, they got it started again”. Give them 48 hours to fix it, says David Lindahl.
David Lindahl is a researcher at FOI and works primarily with cyber security. According to him, there have also been cyber attacks against drinking water works – but with weak results.
– You can cause serious disruptions and costs. But of all the cyberattacks we have seen throughout the world, there is not a single example where someone has died in a cyber attack against a drinking water work, he says.
All civil infrastructure vulnerable
But at the same time, he says that the drinking water system is partly vulnerable.
– Almost all civilian infrastructure in Sweden is quite vulnerable. You cannot monitor a power line of 80 miles and you could also throw nails on the highway when it is fog. We live in a society where the infrastructure is quite vulnerable and it is not unique to the drinking water, says David Lindahl.
But he says that Sweden around the clock has staff working on repairing the civilian infrastructure.
– There are small incidents or errors all the time. But those who work with it go out and fix it. For the most part so quickly that we don’t even have time to notice it, he says.
In the clip above, David Lindahl points out three actors – including foreign power – who might be interested in sabotaging. See more in the clip above.