Time to Achieve Resilience: Preparing for a Digital Winter

As a mission-critical service provider, BaseN places significant emphasis on maintaining situational awareness of both physical and digital assets. However, with the increasing trend of cloudification, ensuring awareness of the latter becomes progressively challenging as systems grow more complex and interdependent.

Recent events have brought attention to the vulnerability of undersea assets. Explosions in the gas pipes on the bottom of the Baltic Sea have demonstrated how disruptions in energy supplies can be wielded as tools in global power politics. Such attacks underscore the need to address the susceptibility of undersea infrastructure.

On the digital front, the destruction of even a single pipe or sea cable can have massive consequences (disruption of internet connectivity, economic impact, data loss and security risks, delayed communications, impact on international relations, difficulty in restoration, dependency on alternatives, increased focus on security, etc.). Many cables carry wavelengths for multiple providers, and resilience is often planned on a virtual plane due to cost and flexibility considerations.

Questions which mission critical and government service providers must ask themselves are:

1. Can I rely on my cloud provider in the event of major international connectivity disruption?
2. How does my cloud provider prioritize my service during emergency?
3. Under what jurisdiction does my cloud provider operate?
4. How much am I willing to invest to ensure my Digital Sovereignty?
5. Who are the true stakeholders of the underlying infrastructure, and what are their motivations during a conflict?

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, there was hope that increased international commercial dependence would foster greater peace and prosperity. While there have been some positive developments, recent events remind us that storms can still arise. As we confront an uncertain future, we must be prepared for what some may call a “Digital Winter.” Safeguarding independence and resilience in mission-critical services is of paramount importance in navigating an evolving world of global power dynamics and ever-changing complexities.

//Pasi

Check also this nBlog on Digital Sovereignty