Protection of Subsea Communication Cables

Summary

This discussion at the Internet Governance Forum focused on the security and resilience of subsea telecommunication cables, which carry over 99% of global intercontinental data traffic. The session was co-hosted by UNIDIR and the Norwegian government, bringing together ministers, industry experts, and international organizations to address growing threats to this critical infrastructure.

Ministers from Norway, Finland, Nigeria, and Estonia highlighted how recent incidents, particularly in the Baltic Sea, have demonstrated the vulnerability of subsea cables to both accidental damage and intentional sabotage. They emphasized that geopolitical tensions have significantly increased risks, with incidents involving Russia’s shadow fleet cutting cables in European waters. The speakers stressed that protecting subsea cables requires comprehensive international cooperation, as these systems cross national borders and operate in international waters.

Industry representatives shared practical experiences, including a detailed account of a cable cut between Latvia and Sweden that took 28 days to repair despite good preparation. They discussed emerging technologies like distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) that can detect threats up to two kilometers away and provide real-time monitoring of underwater activities. The panelists emphasized that fiber optic cables can essentially function as massive underwater sensor networks.

Key themes throughout the discussion included the importance of public-private partnerships, the need for redundancy and route diversity, and the critical role of preparedness and crisis management planning. Speakers highlighted initiatives like the ITU’s International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience and regional cooperation agreements in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. The discussion concluded that strengthening subsea cable resilience is a “team sport” requiring coordinated efforts across governments, industry, and international organizations, with resilience built by design rather than as an afterthought.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Critical Infrastructure Vulnerability**: Subsea telecommunication cables carry over 99% of global intercontinental data traffic, making them essential digital lifelines that remain largely “out of sight and out of mind” despite their critical importance to the global digital economy, healthcare, education, and financial systems.

– **Evolving Threat Landscape**: The security environment has fundamentally changed, with incidents in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and other regions showing a dramatic increase in both accidental and intentional damage to cables, including activities by “shadow fleets” and state-backed interference amid growing geopolitical tensions.

– **Multi-stakeholder Cooperation as Essential**: Effective protection requires coordinated efforts between governments, private industry, international organizations, and civil society, with emphasis on public-private partnerships, regional cooperation agreements (like those in the North Sea and Baltic Sea), and international bodies like the ITU Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience.

– **Resilience by Design, Not Response**: Protection must be intentional and built into systems from the planning stage, incorporating redundancy, route diversity, advanced monitoring technologies (like distributed acoustic sensing), rapid repair capabilities, and comprehensive preparedness including crisis management protocols and regular exercises.

– **Regulatory and Legal Framework Gaps**: There’s a need for updated international cooperation mechanisms, streamlined permitting processes for repairs, clarification of roles between civil and defense authorities, and better implementation of existing legal tools under international law rather than creating entirely new regulatory structures.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to raise awareness about the critical vulnerability of subsea cable infrastructure and foster international cooperation to strengthen protection and resilience measures. The session sought to move beyond mere conversation to serve as “a call for governments, industry, and the wider multi-stakeholder community to come together and exchange best practices, strengthen cooperation, and build resilience.”

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a consistently serious and urgent tone throughout, reflecting the critical nature of the infrastructure being discussed. Speakers emphasized that “the risks are no longer hypothetical” and stressed the need for immediate action. While collaborative and constructive, there was an underlying sense of urgency driven by recent incidents and the recognition that current threats are both increasing and evolving. The tone remained professional and solution-oriented, with participants sharing concrete experiences and actionable recommendations rather than engaging in abstract theoretical discussions.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Giacomo Persi Paoli** – Head of the Security and Technology Program at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), session moderator and co-host

– **Karianne Tung** – Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance of Norway

– **Jarno Syrjala** – Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, Finland

– **Bosun Tijani** – Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy of Nigeria, co-chair of the ITU International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience

– **Liisa-Ly Pakosta** – Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs of Estonia

– **Camino Kavanagh** – Expert and research fellow from UNIDIR

– **Steinar Bjornstad** – Strategic competence and research manager at TAMPNET (offshore telecom service provider)

– **Evijs Taube** – Member of the management board from Latvia State Radio and Television Center

– **Sandra Maximiano** – Chair of the board of directors of ANACOM (National Regulatory Authority for Communications in Portugal), co-chair of the ITU International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience

– **Kent Bressie** – Legal advisor for International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), participating remotely

– **Session video** – Video content/narrator (not a human speaker)

**Additional speakers:**

None identified beyond the provided speakers names list.

# Comprehensive Report: Strengthening the Security and Resilience of Subsea Telecommunication Cables

## Executive Summary

This Internet Governance Forum session, co-hosted by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) and the Norwegian government, brought together ministers, industry experts, and international organisations to address the critical vulnerability of subsea telecommunication cables. The discussion emphasised that these cables, which carry over 99% of global intercontinental data traffic, represent essential digital lifelines that remain largely “out of sight and out of mind” despite their fundamental importance to modern society.

The session established a four-pillar framework for cable resilience: protection, planning, preparedness, and response. Speakers emphasised that “the risks are no longer hypothetical” and stressed the need for immediate action, driven by recent incidents and the recognition that current threats are both increasing and evolving. Key outcomes included the establishment of ITU Advisory Body working groups for 2025-26, regional cooperation agreements in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, and concrete national commitments to enhanced protection frameworks.

The discussion remained professional and solution-oriented, with participants sharing concrete experiences and actionable recommendations, ultimately concluding that cable protection is fundamentally “a team sport” requiring coordinated efforts across governments, industry, and international organisations.

## Critical Infrastructure Vulnerability and Societal Dependence

The discussion began with a stark assessment of society’s complete dependence on subsea cables. Giacomo Persi Paoli, Head of the Security and Technology Program at UNIDIR and session moderator, established that subsea cables carry over 99% of global intercontinental data traffic, making them critical digital infrastructure that underpins the global economy.

Karianne Tung, Norway’s Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance, emphasised that digital society is completely dependent on submarine cables for healthcare, education, and transport systems. This dependency was further illustrated by Liisa-Ly Pakosta, Estonia’s Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs, who explained that as a fully digital state, Estonia faces actual threats to government services when cables are cut.

The human impact of cable failures was powerfully articulated by Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, who shared his personal experience during West African cable cuts last year in March: “I was surprised at how, of course, we were fortunate, the private sector came together. But as a minister, I didn’t have any answer to give to people. And people don’t often complain about companies when you have natural disasters. It’s the government that they look to for answer.” This comment fundamentally reframed the discussion from technical protection measures to governance accountability, highlighting how governments are held accountable for infrastructure failures regardless of ownership structures.

## Evolving Threat Landscape and Geopolitical Context

The discussion revealed a fundamental shift in the security environment surrounding subsea cables. Tung highlighted recent incidents with damages to subsea cables in the Baltic Sea and Red Sea, demonstrating increased vulnerability in critical maritime regions. This assessment was reinforced by Pakosta, who provided stark geopolitical context: “Let us remember that it was 1884 when the Paris Convention of Undersea Telegraphic Cables was agreed… So this is actually the situation where we are just now, as well, within the broader geopolitical situation. What we see around this area… that the Russian shadow fleet is cutting down our connections.”

Pakosta noted a dramatic rise in “accidents” during the full-scale war in Ukraine, with intentional cable cutting by Russian shadow fleet vessels, connecting current geopolitical tensions to a 140-year pattern of intentional cable disruption during conflicts.

Camino Kavanagh, an expert and research fellow from UNIDIR, provided crucial empirical context with historical data analysis. She referenced how in 1881, a group of countries concerned about damage to cables in the North Sea raised the issue in pre-negotiations to the 1884 Convention, and in 1882, a specific government brought statistics showing “60% of damage caused by natural events, 35% by unintentional acts due to accidents at sea or force majeure, and 5% due to gross negligence and some malign activities.” Moving forward 143 years later, she noted that whilst these statistics haven’t changed dramatically, intentional threats are increasing, though it remains “very hard to ascertain responsibility for some of the incidents.”

Jarno Syrjala, Finland’s Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, emphasised that geopolitical tensions have fundamentally changed the security environment with significant implications for digital infrastructure safety. He stressed the need for urgency in developing innovative technological solutions, noting that different regions experience vastly different threat landscapes and problem sets.

## Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation and Governance

A central theme throughout the discussion was the absolute necessity of international cooperation and public-private partnerships for effective subsea cable protection. Tung articulated this clearly: “Cross-border cooperation is crucial since submarine cables cross national borders and international waters.” She provided concrete examples of successful regional cooperation, including North Sea cooperation agreements from 2024 and Baltic Sea cooperation agreements established in May 2025 with Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, the EU, and Norway for protection of critical subsea infrastructure.

Syrjala reinforced this theme, explaining how international cooperation through NATO, the European Union, and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) helps build resilience and response capabilities. He advocated for the multi-stakeholder community to have a more prominent role in submarine cable resilience discussions, emphasising that solid public-private partnership represents one of the most important aspects of telecommunications resilience.

Sandra Maximiano, co-chair of the ITU International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience and Chair of the board of directors of ANACOM (Portugal’s National Regulatory Authority for Communications), highlighted how the ITU Advisory Body provides a global platform for collaboration between public and private sectors. She noted that the body, co-chaired with Bosun Tijani, has established three working groups for 2025-26 focusing on resilience by design, timely deployment and repair, and risk identification and monitoring.

Kent Bressie, legal advisor for the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) participating remotely, provided industry perspective on this cooperation. He noted that the ICPC, founded in 1958 with more than 240 members from approximately 75 countries, emphasises the “need for better awareness and communication between submarine cable operators, marine industries, and governments. Governments need to understand what industry does and recognise actions only governments can take.”

This theme of complementary capabilities was reinforced throughout the discussion, with speakers acknowledging that whilst private industry owns and operates most cables, only governments can take certain political and military responses to threats. The challenge lies in creating effective coordination mechanisms that leverage both sectors’ strengths whilst maintaining clear accountability structures.

## Technical Innovation and Resilience by Design

The discussion highlighted significant technological advances in cable monitoring and threat detection alongside the fundamental principle of building resilience into systems from the beginning. Steinar Bjornstad, Strategic competence and research manager at TAMPNET (an offshore telecom service provider), explained how fiber sensing technology allows cables to work as underwater microphones, detecting approaching threats: “Combining multiple monitoring tools including AIS information and fiber sensing provides comprehensive situational awareness.”

The technological capability was further elaborated through distributed acoustic sensing, which turns fiber optic cables into virtual hydrophones for ocean monitoring. Light pulses are injected into fiber cables, and backscattered light reveals acoustic pressure fields, essentially making “the ocean transparent” for monitoring purposes. The technology can detect threats like two kilometers away and provide real-time monitoring of underwater activities.

Evijs Taube, a member of the management board from Latvia State Radio and Television Center, introduced a paradigm shift in thinking about cables: “Every cable, existing cable is a big asset, and we can call it a big sensor. If we install… distributed or centralised… integrated system of such sensors in a particular area, for example, Baltic Sea… that would give a big benefit, not only protecting the cables, but to understand what is going on under the water.”

This comment transformed the discussion from viewing cables as passive infrastructure requiring protection to active sensing networks that could provide comprehensive underwater surveillance, turning the infrastructure itself into a security solution.

A fundamental principle that emerged was “resilience by design.” Tijani articulated this powerfully: “Resilience should be intentional. It shouldn’t be something that is afterthought.” This philosophy emphasised that protection must be built into systems from the planning stage rather than added reactively.

Bjornstad explained how multiple cables and optical switching enable quick traffic rerouting when cables fail, demonstrating the importance of redundancy in system design. Maximiano reinforced this by advocating for building redundancy through multiple geographically diverse cable routes and avoiding strategic choke points. Tijani emphasised that countries need multiple access points to cables rather than single cable connections, noting that resilience requires calculated investment in infrastructure diversity.

## Response Preparedness and Crisis Management

The practical challenges of cable repair and crisis response emerged as critical concerns throughout the discussion. Bjornstad explained that repair alliance membership ensures cable repair within a couple of weeks when incidents occur, but this requires significant advance preparation and investment.

Taube provided a detailed case study of a successful repair between Latvia and Sweden, explaining: “we tried three times to recover, the third time was successful, and despite of February being a short month, we managed to fix it within a month, so 28 days.” This demonstrated the importance of preparation, spare parts, and standby vessel agreements, while highlighting that even with good preparation, repairs can take nearly a month, creating extended vulnerability periods.

Effective crisis management emerged as a crucial component requiring clear crisis management teams, communication channels with partners, and public communication strategies. Taube emphasised the importance of established communication lines with international partners and 24/7 contact protocols, noting that preparation through table exercises and drills is essential, though real incidents provide irreplaceable learning experiences.

Maximiano identified the need for collective mechanisms to support repair capacity, especially for regions lacking resources. She noted that small island states and remote regions need special attention where economic incentives for response are lower. The discussion revealed that limited repair ships and talent for cable maintenance require calculated investment and regional cooperation.

Tijani highlighted the workforce development challenges, noting difficulties in attracting young talent to the submarine cable industry. This human resource challenge compounds the technical and logistical difficulties of maintaining adequate repair capacity globally.

## Regulatory Framework Challenges and Best Practices

The regulatory dimension of cable protection revealed several complex challenges. Bressie presented ICPC best practices advocating a holistic approach including default separation distances and single government contact points. However, he also warned that government policies can potentially undermine cable protection through excessive delays and clustering requirements.

A particularly striking example of counterintuitive regulation was Bressie’s observation about cable location transparency: “We see a renewed push by some governments to remove cables from nautical charts. This is woefully misguided. Given that approximately 70 percent of cable damage each year is caused by fishing and anchors, removing cables from nautical charts would significantly increase those risks and make it impossible for cable owners to pursue damages claims.”

This comment challenged security-through-obscurity thinking, demonstrating how transparency actually enhances protection by enabling avoidance of accidental damage. It highlighted the need for evidence-based security measures rather than intuitive but potentially counterproductive approaches.

Maximiano noted that regulation needs to keep pace with technological innovation and high-capacity connectivity demands, particularly as artificial intelligence applications require massive computational capacity that depends on robust cable infrastructure. Syrjala noted that Finland had already transposed the NIS2 directive into national law in April 2025 with comprehensive telecommunications resilience requirements.

## Implementation and Future Challenges

The discussion produced several concrete commitments and initiatives. The ITU Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience established three working groups for 2025-26 focusing on resilience by design, timely deployment and repair, and risk identification and monitoring. The Abuja Declaration was approved in February 2025 as a milestone for international cooperation on submarine cable resilience.

Multiple countries committed to implementing the EU Action Plan on Cable Security with four objectives: prevention, detection, response and repair, and deterrence. Several nations signed the New York Declaration on Submarine Cable Security to promote integrity and accessibility.

At the national level, Norway committed to establishing dedicated cooperation between private sector and civil/defence authorities with clarified roles and responsibilities. Nigeria announced plans to set up a dedicated desk within its communications commission for cable protection protocols and international coordination.

Despite these concrete commitments, several significant challenges remain unresolved. Limited repair capacity globally, particularly the shortage of specialised vessels and trained personnel for cable maintenance, represents a critical vulnerability that requires sustained investment and international coordination.

Many developing countries and small island states continue to lack adequate frameworks and expertise for cable protection, creating global vulnerabilities that could affect international connectivity. The economic incentives for prompt response mechanisms in remote regions remain insufficient, requiring innovative financing and cooperation mechanisms.

Technical challenges include the ongoing debate over removing cables from nautical charts, difficulties in attributing responsibility for cable incidents, and regulatory delays that can undermine protection efforts. The workforce development challenge of attracting young talent to the submarine cable industry requires sustained attention from both industry and educational institutions.

## Conclusion and Strategic Implications

The discussion concluded with Giacomo Persi Paoli’s synthesis that strengthening subsea cable resilience is fundamentally “a team sport” requiring coordinated efforts across governments, industry, and international organisations. He emphasised his four-pillar framework of protection, planning, preparedness, and response, noting that “plans are useless unless they are put in practice through concrete measures of preparedness” and stressing the need for “effective, quick response to minimize disruption.”

The session successfully moved beyond abstract discussions to concrete commitments and actionable frameworks, though significant implementation challenges remain. The strong consensus among participants suggests that the subsea cable protection community has developed mature understanding of the challenges and potential solutions.

The session’s emphasis on resilience by design, international cooperation, and public-private partnerships provides a solid foundation for addressing the evolving threats to this critical infrastructure. The combination of historical perspective, current geopolitical realities, and future technological possibilities creates a comprehensive framework for action.

Ultimately, the discussion reinforced that protecting subsea cables is not merely a technical challenge but a fundamental requirement for maintaining global digital connectivity, economic stability, and societal resilience in an increasingly interconnected world. The urgency expressed by all participants reflects the recognition that the time for preparation and action is now, before more serious incidents test the limits of current protection capabilities.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, good morning and a warm welcome to this session, whether you’re following us here in the room or online. We’re here today to discuss a topic that is both critical and too often overlooked, the security and resilience of subsea telecommunication cables. This hidden infrastructure carries over 99% of global intercontinental data, silently underpinning every facet of our digital world that we rely on. Yet, despite of their criticality, they remain largely out of sight and too often out of mind. My name is Giacomo Persi-Paoli. I’m the head of the security and technology program at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, UNIDIR, and it is an honor to co-host this session in partnership with the government of Norway as part of this year’s Internet Governance Forum. Recent incidents, whether accidental or deliberate, have underscored how vulnerable these lifelines, these digital lifelines truly are. The growing intersection of geopolitical tensions, malicious cyber capabilities, and infrastructure fragility highlights a stark reality. The risks are no longer hypothetical. They’re here and they’re multiplying. This is why this session aspires to be more than a conversation. It aspires to serve as a call for governments, industry, and the wider multi-stakeholder community to come together and exchange best practices, strengthen cooperation, and build resilience into one of the most vital components of the global digital ecosystem. This session will unfold in two parts. We will begin with a high-level ministerial dialogue offering national perspectives on how countries are approaching the protection of subsea cables. Following that, we will turn to a multi-stakeholder panel of experts who will reflect on the evolving threat landscape and share actionable insights on how to secure subsea cable infrastructure. We are privileged to be joined by an exceptional group of leaders and practitioners from across sectors and regions. Their experience and ideas are vital as we chart a path forward, one that reflects both the complexity of today’s challenges and the spirit of international cooperation that forums like IGF are designed to inspire. And now, without further ado, I have the honour of inviting here on stage Minister Karianne Tung, Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance of Norway, Jarno Syrjala, Under-Secretary of State for International Trade in Finland, Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy of Nigeria, and Liisa-Ly Pakosta, Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs of Estonia. Please join me in a round of applause in welcoming them on stage. Thank you once again for taking the time to join us to discuss this very important And I would like to start with you, Minister Tung, and give you the floor and the opportunity to introduce the topic. Please.

Karianne Tung: Thank you, moderator. Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here together with you for this important session on the protection of subsea telecommunication cables, and thank you once again for being here. The underwater cables make up the foundation of the global internet infrastructure, enabling people, communities and businesses to communicate, share and innovate. The recent years’ incidents with damages to subsea infrastructure have reminded us how important it is to increase the resilience of this critical infrastructure. We’ve seen the incident with the North Stream Pipeline damages to subsea cables in the Baltic Sea and in the Red Sea, and once again we see war raging on European soil. As more than 99% of the intercontinental data traffic is carried by subsea communication cables have raised the awareness that we must better protect this critical infrastructure. Norway has intensified our efforts to increase the security of subsea cables. We are conducting service of subsea cables for detection and prevention of threats. We make use of innovative technologies to monitor the subsea cables, enable detection of threats and incidents, and quick notification and intervention. We are also establishing a close cooperation between the private sector and the civil and defence authorities. This way we can combine and maximise the knowledge and strength of the civil and private sector and the defence sector in this important work. We have seen the importance of clarifying the roles and responsibilities of owners of subsea cables, civil authorities and the defence sector. This experience from the Baltic Sea has shown us that such clarifications are needed for swift action when incidents occur. occur. But there’s no escaping that submarine cable infrastructure often go across both national borders and international waters. Therefore, it is crucial with both European and international cooperation to identify and implement effective security measures and the necessary regulatory framework. One good example of such cooperation was established in 2024 for the protection of critical subsea infrastructure in the North Sea between the North Sea countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Denmark, and Norway. In May 2025, a similar cooperation was agreed on for protection of critical subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea with Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, EU, and Norway. We need a combination of national, regional, and international cooperation to achieve effective resilience measures and the necessary exchange of information about threats and sharing of best practice. Threats to subsea communication cables are not limited by national borders, so international cooperation is vital for protection of subsea cables, and together we can better advance new and innovative ways of securing these critical cables that the Internet is fully depending on. Thank you.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you very much, Minister Tang, for sharing these opening remarks and also for highlighting among other things the importance of cooperation, both between states and governments, but also public-private cooperation as a key enabler for the protection of subsea cables. And now I’d like to give the floor to Jarno Syrjala, Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, Finland, please.

Jarno Syrjala: Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It’s great to be here, and it’s my great pleasure to provide some remarks. on behalf of the government of Finland on protection of subsea telecommunications cables. The fundamental change in our security environment has implications for safety and resilience of our critical digital infrastructure. As recent incidents at the Baltic Sea have demonstrated, we have a clear need to better protect our critical undersea infrastructure. Trust in the digital systems is necessary for sustainable, inclusive digital future. The security of data and digital infrastructure are key concerns for countries from both national security and an economic standpoint. The security of digital systems and data increases trust, and trust adds to investments, welfare and prosperity. Combining the current threat landscape and our resilience, Finland has a long history of preparedness in all areas of life, including the telecommunications sector. For example, resilience requirements for public communications networks were deemed necessary several decades ago, and have been developed over time as technologies and usage needs have changed. Comprehensive telecommunications legislation and extensive resilience requirements, covering also submarine cables, have been implemented in Finland’s national telecommunications legislation. The NIS2 directive, focused on enhancing cybersecurity across the EU, was also transposed into national law in April 2025. One of the most important aspects of the NIS2 directive is the importance of the use of of the telecommunications resilience is a solid public-private partnership. Over the years, close cooperation between public authorities and private companies has been established in Finland. I would like to also underline the importance of international cooperation on the security and resilience of submarine cables. International cross-border cooperation plays an important role, for example in terms of supervision, building new capabilities and preventing disruptions. We encourage also other actors to engage in the international cooperation and partnership building on submarine cable resilience, including the multi-stakeholder community. NATO and EU have increased their resilience, response and deterrence, which help us protect against all incidents, intentional or unintentional. Most recent example of this practical cooperation to protect critical undersea infrastructure, including submarine cables, is the recent Memorandum of Understanding, which the Baltic Sea, NATO Allies and the EU have published in May 2025. Within International Telecommunications Union, ITU, we have endorsed the International Advisory Body Declaration on Submarine Cable Resilience, adopted in February 2025, and look forward to engaging in the working groups. Pleased to see the co-chair of the advisory body, Honorable Minister Tijani, taking an active role on these issues. In addition, the EU Action Plan on Cable Security defines four objectives. to address the challenges in the field of submarine cable resilience and security prevention, detection, response and repair, and deterrence. Finland endorses the actions and objectives defined in the action plan and is committed to them. Also, we are co-signatories of the New York Declaration on Submarine Cable Security. The Declaration aims to encourage countries to promote the integrity, security and accessibility of the submarine cable infrastructure, which is important for the digital economy and a prerequisite for the trusted connectivity. To conclude, our societies are increasingly dependent on reliable and secure digital connections that ensure free flow of information and support growth in the digital economy. Securing critical infrastructure is of primary importance for Finland. This is why we will intensify cooperation with like-minded countries and actors to strengthen the security of submarine cables. A lot of focus has been placed on using new technologies in protecting critical undersea infrastructure. We need a sense of urgency on this. We need to develop well-working mechanisms that are innovative and willing to experiment. With regard to submarine cables, we underline three areas with resilience as a priority. Adequacy of repair capacity, material preparation, as well as infrastructure monitoring and sensing capabilities. The momentum on submarine cable security is right now. It is important to enhance international cooperation on this. this topic. The multi-stakeholder community should also have a more prominent role in discussions on submarine cable resilience. And I’m grateful for our Norwegian colleagues to place more attention to this topic. Thank you.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you very much, Under-Secretary Siriala, for your remarks. For, again, stressing the importance of cooperation, both between states and within the multi-stakeholder community, but also for bringing to light the importance of trust and security as vehicles towards the resilience of digital information infrastructure. I’d like now to give the floor to Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy of Nigeria.

Bosun Tijani: Please. Thank you so much for the opportunity, and good morning, everyone. It’s a privilege to, of course, be on this stage to contribute to this important conversation. One that is important, not just because, of course, we all know that digital economy is now literally the backbone of every economy in the world, but the fact that, you know, submarine cables are not just technical assets. These are literally the most important critical infrastructure that we can think of in the world today. And I think when you compare it to many other critical infrastructure, I don’t think attention is being given enough to actually how we protect it. And while we may be seeing more attention, I think we have to call out, in particular, the International Telecommunications Union, the ICPC, for the work they’ve done, but also the renewed focus on mobilizing actors and partnerships and collaboration to drive stronger attention on this cable. When you look at countries all over the world, and I can speak to Nigeria and, of course, a lot of other African countries, a lot of the long-edge challenges that we face, we’re seeing communications technologies as being one of the fastest ways. in which we can address so many of these challenges, whether you talk about quality education or being able to provide healthcare to literally everyone on our continent and in our countries. We see the role that digital technologies, connected technologies can actually play. We’ve seen the role of connected technologies in financial inclusion, for instance, which has changed the landscape significantly. I think the most popular ones would be what you have in M-PESA in East Africa. How many people we’ve been able to now bring into the financial system because we have connected technologies. It’s the same in my country as well, where financial technology solutions are now changing how we do things. And all these solutions will not be possible without the internet. I think the introductory remarks mentioned that 99% of the traffic that is actually carried on the internet is on subsea cables. So we can actually see why this is not just a technical asset. It is an important asset that not only do we need to protect it, we also need to worry more about the broader resilience of this cable. Which is why as a country we’re extremely excited to be participating in the international advisory body that ITU has put together. And this advisory body for us is not just another talk shop or opportunity to gather. It’s not one where we’re just talking about how do we come up with more laws to protect. But how do we also deploy for timely repair? Because sometimes the damages to the cable are not intentional. Natural disaster may also cause the destruction of these cables. How do we ensure that nations can timely come to the point where they can fix this cable? Because just a day or two or three of some of these cables being down can cause significant problems for economies. That’s why we’re extremely excited to be part of it. The second thing that the advisory body, it’s about that we find extremely useful is also how do we ensure that we can mobilize people to think more of the protocols around, and building of frameworks to improve the resilience around, which means in some countries you have only one cable, and we have opportunity for countries to be connected to more than one cable, right? This is also part of the framework that can improve the resilience within any country. In many countries you have these cables, of course these cables are not cables that you deal with in silos. We have about eight subsea cables in Nigeria, nearly all of them. I think all of them actually came through Portugal, and while coming through Portugal they passed through so many other countries. So this is something that you have to do in collaboration with so many countries. So we’re working on not just the repair, we’re working also on ensuring that we can increase the resilience by ensuring countries have multiple access to it. We’re also working on the diversity, is there a need to even have more of these cables in the first place? Not just the ones we have, do we need to have more of the cables? From that advisory body as a country, we’re now being inspired to set up a dedicated desk within our communications commission that is responsible for ensuring that the protocol within country is clear, but the clarity within country is also then translated to neighboring countries and partner countries, because you can’t do this in silo. And that’s one thing we extremely enjoy. The second thing is also the talent and the resources to be able to make these repairs when they happen. We’ve seen on the African continent a limited amount of ships that can quickly go and be deployed to help with the fixing, and there’s a limit to how much investment you can throw at it, because it’s not something that happens all the time as well. So it has to be an extremely calculated investment. What’s the optimal way to do it? This is something we’re thinking of. Another is talent. There’s a need for talent, ubiquitous talent that can actually also support, whether it’s in the maintenance or the repair of subsea cable. That’s also something that Nigeria is also prioritizing as well. And by extension to subsea cable, we’re then asking difficult questions even around fiber optic network as well. Because that’s what take the advantage of subsea cable to the people, and we need to think about when we’re thinking the sustainability and resilience, we’re now saying can we be thinking of these things in conjunction, not just one in isolation, because one feeds into the other. So we’re extremely happy to be part of this, and I think it’s something we’ll urge other partners to take seriously, that we don’t just look at loss only to protect them, but we also look at how do we make them a lot more resilient as well.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you, Minister Tijani, for also highlighting how resilience is not just about protection, as you just mentioned. There are many other components that is definitely the part of securing to protection, but there is also a very strong component that relates to redundancy, relates to mitigating and be able to react when incidents do occur. And also thank you for highlighting how the work conducted under the ITU is helping driving change at the national and regional level, and being a representative of the UN, that’s ultimately our best hope, is that through the work of these multilateral bodies, we can actually impact and drive change at the national and regional level. So thank you for sharing your remarks. And last, but of course not least, I would like to give the floor now to Liisa-Ly Pakosta, the Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs of Estonia. Please.

Liisa-Ly Pakosta: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me here. It’s a great honor for Estonia to participate here. So I have in a way a possibility to summarize why we are talking about this topic now. It is the situation that has changed, at least around this region where we physically are now. Let us remember that it was 1884. when the Paris Convention of Undersea Telegraphic Cables was agreed. And this was already then, because if the good countries established the undersea connections, there were, at the next moment, the bad guys who wanted to cut it down. So this is actually the situation where we are just now, as well, within the broader geopolitical situation. What we see around this area, where we are physically now, that the Russian shadow fleet is cutting down our connections. And it has been underlined several times already here, how important these connections are for our people, for our security, for our economies, for our hospitals, for our transport, name only. Estonia is a fully digital state, so all our government services are digital. Attacked by cutting down the undersea communication cables is actually not only a hybrid threat to our country, but it is a very actual threat to our country’s services to be actually there for our citizens. So we have seen a dramatic rise of accidents, so-called accidents, during the full-scale war in Ukraine. And I fully agree with my colleague, some of the incidents beforehand have been unintentional. But what we see now is that we see definitely the intentional cut down of the undersea cables. And the only way to handle this is, I will put it very short, that the good guys from like-minded countries, from like-minded organizations work together against, to stop the bad guys who want to take down the security of our people, who want to take down our hospital services, economy, transport, heating system, name only. So this is the actual question we are discussing now. What we can do together in order to beat the bad guys who want to harm us.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you, Minister Pakosta, for sharing your perspective. And Estonia, in fact, has been a champion of driving digital transformation for many years. So thank you so much for sharing your perspective. We still have a couple of minutes before we wrap up this first part of the panel. So I want to give all of you the opportunity, if you wanted to add anything to your remarks or to react to anything you have heard from your colleagues, this would be a good moment. We do have a couple of minutes left. Please.

Karianne Tung: Thank you, moderator. I think the panel has shown that we are completely dependent on the submarine cables. Our society, our digital society, for health care services, education, transport system and so forth. So being able to work together, both multilateral, but also multistakeholder, since many of these cables also are non-governmental and so forth. It’s important to bring the different actors together and to discuss how we can make them more resilient so that we keep connected both to society, but also internationally.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. Please.

Bosun Tijani: I think the point I would love to add is that building resiliency into subsea cable shouldn’t be half to thought. I think for a long time this is a cable that we’ve dumped there and we’ve concluded that the risk to them is not severe. And as we’re saying, both intentional and unintentional risk to them will become severe. And because of their critical nature, I think resilience should be intentional. It shouldn’t be something that is afterthought. And what got me extremely passionate about this as a minister was when the cable cuts in the West African region happened last year, in March, and I saw firsthand the impact on society. Because we’re all working daily to move literally everything online. And if we’re moving everything online, if the backbone to this is at risk, it is a big challenge. And I was surprised at how, of course, we were fortunate, the private sector, because a lot of these cables are owned by private companies, the private sector came together. But as a minister, I didn’t have any answer to give to people. And people don’t often complain about companies when you have natural disasters. It’s the government that they look to for answer. And that’s why I think the work of the advisory board, the fact that ITU is prioritizing this, is extremely important. I don’t think it’s something we should push away. Some countries, some regions have the expertise, the framework, the know-how to be able to address this. You’d be surprised at how many countries and regions in the world have no clue where to start from. So even having things like regional redundancy and protocol, I think is something we should mainstream more. We saw the minister talked about the one in the Baltic region, but there are so many other parts of the world without this understanding. So we should collaborate more, share more, and ensure that collectively we can actually protect this critical infrastructure. Thank you.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Please.

Liisa-Ly Pakosta: Thank you. Thank you very much for underlining this, because this is absolutely essential. We know sea as for ages connecting the whole world, not just regions. That is the fantastic part of sea. And also not only the ferries, but also the undersea cables. that we now know as technological possibility. And this is nothing we can do alone to protect them. So, I think Norway has put it very well and very timely, this topic here on the agenda, because really it is a global issue. Although we have some local issues, but in general what we need is a very clear universal set of rules to protect our citizens in all the continents. That is absolutely what we need.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. Please.

Jarno Syrjala: Yeah, I think it’s very easy to echo what has been said about the international cooperation and the meaning of that, because we definitely are in a different kind of situations and there are different lessons there to be shared. And of course, I mean, when we talk about telecommunications or communication cables in general, so that’s only part of the issues, what is there lying beneath the waves. And in Finland, so we have for a long time, decades already, we have applied this kind of model of comprehensive security. So, these are also things that you have to connect to the other areas. So, how to keep the society keeping during a time of peace or during a time of crisis, but you have to have a holistic understanding of what is it all about.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you very much. As the screens in front of us are suggesting, we have come up to time for this first part of the panel. I would like to sincerely thank you for taking the time to share your experience and expertise with us, with the audience here in the room and online. And I do invite our audience to join me in a round of applause for Minister Tung, Under-Secretary Siriala, Minister Tijani and Minister Pakosta. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. As we reconfigure the stage for the next part of the panel, I do invite you to watch a very interesting video on a specific application of a subsea cable technology, distributed acoustic sensing, and in the meantime we’ll prepare for the continuation of the panel. So over to the screen.

Session video: We can turn the ocean transparent and monitor whales by using distributed acoustic sensing. We have a network of fiber optic cables covering the world. Distributed acoustic sensing works by turning these cables into very long lines of virtual hydrophones. To record this data, one injects light pulses into a fiber cable. Some light is scattered back from impurities in the fiber and can be received by a DAS interrogator. Acoustic sources, such as whales, radiate oscillating pressure fields that stretch and compress the fiber. Variations in backscattered light tell us about the acoustic pressure fields at different points along the cable. This means that we can listen to the ocean at many separate points, creating tens of thousands of virtual hydrophones. This data is available immediately ashore at the end of the cable. Distributed acoustic sensing can revolutionize the way we understand and listen to the ocean, but we can go further than that. We can understand mechanisms of earthquakes, risks of landslides, avalanches, floods. For the ocean, we already have more than 1 million kilometers of fiber optic cables. What if we can use this as a global monitoring system?

Giacomo Persi Paoli: I’m now very happy to introduce the next set of speakers on stage. This distinguished panel of experts comprising representatives from government, industry, academia, and civil society will really help us unpack different perspectives on the evolving threat landscape as well as on actionable measures. to protect subsea cable infrastructure, and we just heard through the remarks of all of the four ministers that preceded this panel how multi-stakeholder cooperation is indeed a key component to building resilience. Over the next hour or so, the panel discussion will focus on four key components. First, we will look at the current and emerging threat landscape. We will also try to unpack what are some of the vulnerabilities in the digital systems that monitor, manage, and secure subsea cable networks. We will be diving deeper into applicable international law, voluntary norms, and emerging best practices relevant to subsea cable protection. And last but not least, we will try at least our best to come up with some recommendations for strengthening subsea cable security through technical policy and legal mechanism, including the role of public-private partnership. And now, without further ado, I have the pleasure of inviting to join me here on stage and online Camino Camino Kavanagh, expert and research fellow from UNIDIR, Steinar Bjornstad, strategic competence and research manager at TAMPNET, Evijs Taube, member of the management board from Latvia State Radio and Television Center, Sandra Maximiano, chair of the board of directors of ANACOM, and Kent Bressie, who is joining us online, legal advisor for International Cable Protection Committee. Please join me in a round of applause to welcome our speakers on stage. So, we have structured this as a conversation. We have some questions that we have prepared for our experts. If there will be time towards the end of the session, and if you would like to intervene, please do let me know. But I can’t make many promises because we have to finish at 1 p.m. sharp. So Steiner, I’d like to start with you. From an operator’s perspective, how do you integrate resilience into the design and management of subsea cable infrastructure, both technically and strategically, in high-risk regions like the North Sea?

Steinar Bjornstad: Very good question. So at Tampnet, we are an offshore telecom service provider. These type of services is really important these days because it’s also important for oil and gas. So we have a very critical infrastructure. It’s both mobile, it’s satellite, and it’s fixed links. And the thing is, it all depends on the optical subsea fiber cables. So they are really, really important for the services. And the capacity of these cables, it’s enormous, and it’s carrying a lot of traffic, and also for data centers out of Norway. So how to protect these cables, how to enable resilience? The thing is that you need to be able to do this already in the planning. So we have multiple cables, that’s the first thing. And if something goes wrong, we need to repair it quite fast. So we are a member of an alliance, so ensuring that we can have repair within a couple of weeks if something goes wrong. Also, because it’s very high capacity, it’s not that easy to switch this traffic electronically if something goes wrong from one cable to another. But we use optical switching, and even offshore we have optical switching. So we actually switch the light in the optical fiber cables. And by doing this we are able to protect very quickly, put the traffic over to another cable if one cable fails by some reason. So I think that is maybe the key things that we are doing for protecting the traffic.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. Camino, I’d like to come to you now. And we’ve heard now, but even in the previous part of the panel, how different regions are experiencing slightly different considerations when it comes to the threat landscape. But building on the work that you’ve done, and if I’d ask you to zoom out and consider a little bit more what is the broader global picture. How is the threat landscape for subsea cable infrastructure evolving across different regions? And what are some of the key challenges that you have identified?

Camino Kavanagh: Thanks Giacomo, and thank you for the invitation to speak here. It’s a real honor to be on this panel with the other panelists. So I think I’ll zoom back in and then zoom out again. What I found interesting from the minister from Estonia, she mentioned the 1884 Convention. And what’s very interesting in some of the research I’ve been doing on damage to subsea cables, if we’re just looking at the submersed element of submarine cables, or subsea cables, was back in 1881, already a group of countries concerned about damage to cables in the North Sea, raised the issue in the pre-negotiations to the 1884 Convention. In 1882, a specific government brought statistics. to the negotiations of the Paris conference and highlighted that 60% of damage to cables was caused by natural events, 35% by unintentional acts due to accidents at sea or force majeure, and 5% due to gross negligence and some malign activities, and I think within that malign activities would have been very minimal. But that was in the build-up to World War I, and as we know during that period as well, state-backed interventions or damage, sabotage, espionage, et cetera, was increasing and was being introduced into battle planning. Let’s move forward a century plus, I think 143 years later, and those statistics wouldn’t have changed very much, although I think maybe the stats between natural causes and unintentional damage caused by accidents and so forth would slightly change in that sense. The number of accidents caused by intentional damage, the stats, it’s very hard to know, because as we know it’s very hard to ascertain responsibility for some of the incidents, but we do know that it’s a great concern for states, and particularly in the European context and Nord Stream, we know that it’s not just a concern with regard to states in this region, but also in the Baltic Sea, the Irish Sea, the North Atlantic, and so forth. But that differs significantly across regions, as was mentioned by Minister Tijani as well. Different regions are experiencing very, very different problems, and so that call for coordination especially coordination from a regulatory perspective, from an operational perspective, is very difficult when your problem set is also very different, and so reaching some kind of alignment there is critical. absolutely key and absolutely key is also engagement with industry. But I’m not going to go too far into that because I understand there are others that will talk about that problem.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you Camino for this at least first stab at the problem and I think it’s interesting because statistics are normally built on the data we have right and it’s always hard it is hard in the cyber domain and it’s probably just as hard doing that in the specific context of subsea cables to really have strong data on malicious or malign activities because we only hear of the successful attempts. What we don’t know is how much of the malicious activity that threatens or targets subsea cable infrastructure isn’t successful and that in probably if we had more visibility into that and we could do something even even more. But I’d like now to to give the floor to you Evis and your organization as you know speaking of incidents as recently experienced the direct impact of a subsea cable incident. Could you walk us through what happened and the immediate actions that were taken to respond to the disruption of service please.

Evijs Taube: Some some say that the cut cable or unplugged cable is the best way to protect against cyber cyber threats just the unfortunate side effect is the lost loss of communication but jokes aside but my big pleasure to be here and to tell the story and about the incidents on subsea cables of course especially last few years or or especially last couple of years the incidents especially in this area Baltic Sea nor North Sea has dramatically increased like in a normal life before the geopolitics politics changed the incidents happened time by time that’s not that’s not any news the fishing nets, et cetera, but the big incidents in numbers has significantly increased. So also, our company has been prepared, so we had the plans before, we had the drills, procedures, table exercises, algorithms, et cetera, et cetera, spare parts, but when the incident happens, basically everything becomes crystal clear, so not loss of communication, our company, our company’s customers and users immediately feel it, and talking about the impact of the incident, there basically are, let’s simplify the networking, so basically there are two parts, one part is the public internet, and thanks to the design, great design of internet, internet, we can say heals itself, so it rebalances and the public, normal users don’t feel it, and there is other part, let’s call them enterprise or data center to data center, connecting A to B, those guys usually, they should have a second, third or fourth route, if one breaks, everything switches over, like my colleague explained. So about the first part, as far as we know, nobody felt the impact, because the capacity of the connections is very huge, and just losing one cable or one cable connection, normal public don’t feel it. Of course we were speculating that there might be some minor examples, for example somebody was doing the stock exchange trading, where the latency is critical, maybe somebody lost some, we don’t know that, maybe somebody lost a game in Counter-Strike or something like that, where latency is important, talking about the latency. So, over cable is connecting Latvia, Sweden, so very important in terms of latency. When we lost the connection, the latency increased five to ten times, because the speed of light is constant, and then we cannot fight physics in that sense, but otherwise everything continued to work. How we fixed the thing. So, said we need to fix it as soon as possible, but it really depends on preparation. Do we have right spares, do we have right spare cable, the right joints, do we have the vessel stand by agreement, do we have right weather, the waves shouldn’t be higher than two meters, for example, for special vessels. So in our incident, we tried three times to recover, the third time was successful, and despite of February being a short month, we managed to fix it within a month, so 28 days, which is a good result in a winter storm. So all in all, we really had a good lesson, you cannot compare that practical lesson to the table exercise, and we learned a lot from it.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you, also for bringing to light some very concrete examples of the sort of incidents that can occur, but also the 28 days is a remarkable result, but it shows that it’s not something that can be fixed overnight, so it does really require adequate planning and adequate resourcing, otherwise 28 days can then be extended even further. I’d like now to come to you Sandra, and given the strategic location and tradition, Portugal is a very relevant player. in the submarine cable industry, and through your work with ANACOM, the National Regulatory Authority for Communications in Portugal, and more recently with the ITU Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience, what practices do you recognize as being most effective for strengthening subsea cable protection at the national level, as well as across jurisdictions?

Sandra Maximiano: First of all, thanks a lot for the invitation. It’s really a great honor to be here and talking about this so important topic. First, I would also like to tell you that Portugal geography places us at the crossroads of global connectivity. We have one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world, and the long tradition of cable landings. Portugal is uniquely positioned to strengthen its role in the field. So in fact, submarine cables already link us directly to multiple continents. Also, we have two autonomous regions, Madeira and the Source, which are composed by islands, and they depend almost entirely on submarine cables for communication. So that makes us also having this privileged position, but it comes with special responsibilities for ensuring the resilience of submarine cable systems. So we truly believe in four, I would say, key aspects. First, to build redundancy and route diversity. Second, strategic preparation and predictive maintenance. And third, protection zones, so building these protection zones and promote rapid repair capacity. So after all, we cannot prevent every incident. Submarine cable faults are inevitable, as it has been. question we have on how can we or how can it be developed, and how can it be architected so educated people can go to the markets and compete with the hybrid works. There is also some small setbacks which It also suggests a sudden social pause, amongst other things for creating the resilience, ensuring continuity of service of disruption, and these will probably involve, I’ll say four important points, establish multiple geographical diverse cables routes and alternative routes, including satellite backups and terrestrial connections. Avoiding strategic choke points to minimize congestion and high-risk areas, which are more susceptible to sabotage or accidents. And deploying armored cables and burying cables deeper in higher-risk areas. And this will be four important points for planning and building redundancy. Second, I’ll mention strategic preparation, which includes building intelligence into our networks, so they can adapt in real-time. Technologies like software-defining networking and AI analytics allow dynamic rerouting and predictive detection. This agility reduces downtime and boosts resilience. Third, we need collective mechanisms to support repair capacity, especially for regions and countries that lack those resources, to respond on their own. This is particularly important for island states and remote regions. And, at last, we need to promote rapid repair, and it’s really important. For that, we need licensing and permitting procedures that should be simplified and more flexible. And, of course, promote investment in repair vessels and joint capacity. These priorities cannot be postponed. Equally important is having clear plans for incident response, setting strict deadlines for repairs, and establishing priorities levels so that, in case of multiple simultaneous failures, the most critical links, those essential for national security and public welfare, are restored first. So, it’s very important to know which critical infrastructures are in every country so we can establish these priorities. We’re also at a time when technological innovation, particularly artificial intelligence, is reshaping the landscape. The training and deployment of large AI models demand massive computational capacity, as we know, and energy-intensive data centers, which, in turn, depend on robust, high-capacity connectivity, also submarine cables. This is not just about speed, but about enabling an entirely new digital paradigm. Anacom is actively monitoring these trends to ensure that our regulatory framework anticipates infrastructure bottlenecks and ensures sustainable high-capacity connectivity. So, in a very high-speed, I would say, technological change environment, we need regulation to keep the same pace, and that’s what Anacom is investing in nowadays, to keep the same pace as innovation goes, to have a proper regulatory framework. that can enable the redundancy and resilience of marine cables.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. Thank you very much for your initial overview of some key topics. Again, building on the idea that resilience is intentional. It’s not something that can be responsive to the need. The issue of preparedness and the issue of regulation, which are very important. Kent, thank you so much for patiently waiting online. It is a pleasure to see you on the screen. We’ve heard now and before the importance of public-private partnerships when it comes to the protection of subsea cables. And through your work at ICPC, you engage substantially with both governments and industry. So from your perspective, what are the most effective ways to strengthen public-private partnership in responding to cable-related threats?

Kent Bressie: Thank you, Giacomo, for allowing me to participate remotely. I am actually currently on holiday in Greece before I teach oceans law as part of the Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy, which runs each year here in Greece. It’s also nice to see my fellow panelists. To your question, more than anything else, we need more and better awareness and communication between and among submarine cable operators, other marine industries, and governments at the national, regional, and multilateral levels. These are never-ending tasks. They are not one-time things, but we really see a need for ongoing dialogue among these stakeholders at all levels. In particular, governments need to understand what industry already does to promote cable protection and resilience in the design and operation of systems, and also to recognize those actions that governments are uniquely positioned to take, particularly with political and military responses. to intentional damage. In some cases, industry and governments have shared tasks. We also need better understanding of risks and threats to cables. The ICPC, in particular, has a lot of very good data on that, but I’m not sure that it’s always recognized or understood. We also need to understand the interrelationships between unintentional and intentional sources of damage and the fact that the cause of damage is not always immediately known. In the design and development phase, submarine cable operators embed cable protection and system design by selecting routes and landings that balance connectivity needs with risk mitigation and geographic diversity, which Sandra and others today have taken note of, all of which strengthens resilience. In the operating phase, subsequent other marine stakeholders and to publicize the locations of cables, which I’ll return to in a second as that’s become increasingly fraught. Governments don’t need to dictate or duplicate those particular actions, but again, there are some actions that only governments can take. The ICPC launched in 2021 its best practices for governments for cable protection and resilience to highlight the ICPC’s own thinking about this. In particular, the best practices advocate for a holistic approach to risks that minimizes infrastructure damage and promotes continuity of communication, even in the event that there is infrastructure damage. So the best practices are not a lengthy document. They were meant to be very user-friendly, about 12 pages long, and have some very specific best practices. This is highlighted, including the use of default separation distances between cables and other marine activities. As other uncoordinated marine industries, whether it’s wind farms, oil and gas development, seabed mining, vessel anchorages, or fishing can damage cables. Having a single point of contact within national governments. Adoption of cable protection laws and measures and implementation of them. Minimization of cabotage and crewing restrictions, customs duties, taxes, and fees, as this is very much a maritime classification of submarine cables as critical infrastructure in order to secure government resources for protection. This is the subject of a forthcoming study that Camino is publishing. The sharing of risk and threat information between governments and industries we have seen with recent cable damage incidents in the Baltic and the Arctic. There’s still a lot of work to be done there. But so far, I think that a lot of government engagement with the industry in response has so far been very productive. The use of technology such as fiber sensing is also very promising. And then ratification and implementation of the Law of the Sea Convention and the 1884 Convention, both of which established rights and responsibilities for states, including some key tools that relate to cable security. So a lot of these best practices were later incorporated into the New York Statement. Many of them were echoed by Sandra, our previous. panelist speaker. So I’ll just finally note that it’s important for governments to understand how their own policies and regulations can potentially undermine cable protection and resilience, because we’re very concerned about this as an industry, and our best practices also address this. In some jurisdictions, we see national security-oriented regulation creating massive delays for installation and repair permits, and this ultimately undermines development of additional and diverse systems that promote that resilience and allow recovery of damaged systems. We see that regulations oftentimes encourage clustering of cables and landings in narrow corridors to get cables out of the way of offshore energy development or fishing, and that can magnify the risk that a single event will damage multiple cables and disrupt connectivity. And finally, we see a renewed push by some governments to remove cables from nautical charts. This is woefully misguided. Given that approximately 70 percent of cable damage each year is caused by fishing and anchors, removing cables from nautical charts would significantly increase those risks and make it impossible for cable owners to pursue damages claims, because no one would know where the cables are. So ultimately, I don’t think that we need elaborate new regulatory constructs or the like to encourage engagement between governments and industry, but we do need to leverage existing agreements, data, and tools to promote cable resilience, protection, and security, and inform laws, policies, and coordinating mechanisms.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you, Kent, for sharing. your first remarks with us and, you know, having served 15 years in the Navy, the thought of having subsea infrastructure that is not on nautical charts is terrifying in more than one way. But thank you also for bringing to light the best practices that ICPC has developed that I do invite everyone that is interested in consulting. But also for, you opened by stressing the need for continuous dialogue among different stakeholder groups and I think this is key, this is what we’re trying to do, but of course in an hour and a half we can only scratch the surface, there is much more that needs to be done on a continuous basis, even for the simple reason that people change and rotate, particularly in government you may have a very fruitful dialogue today and in six months your counterparts have rotated and have gone to other posts and other jobs and it is important that this dialogue, that there is a mechanism to really make sure this dialogue is continuous. I’d like to go back to our panel for a second round of questions and coming back to you Evis about the incident that you described earlier, and so following the cable disruption, how did your organisation coordinate with national authorities, international partners and any other stakeholder that was relevant, and what are some of the key lessons that emerged about effective collaboration and communication?

Evijs Taube: I would call it different communication channels and first of all they’re very important and not only about like any subsea cable incidents, like any big incidents, we call it like crisis management within a company, so the team should be, like core team of crisis management should be very precise. should be trained, shouldn’t be bigger than needed. Everybody has to know exactly what to do. And that’s also a question of training. As I mentioned, the table exercises. Second is communication with partners. And here we are touching different stakeholders. It includes authorities. It includes international partners. Because like any subsea cable, in most of the cases, it’s connecting countries, right? So you’re connecting one country to another. In our case, Latvia, Sweden. You should know. In our case, we have the established communication line. I’m not talking about cable communication, but about human communication line connecting to NOX 24 by 7. So you always have, like within a minute or seconds, you know to whom to talk to, right? And that also should be documented in the best case, trained, practiced, et cetera. And then the third part is public communication. Public communication also is very important. And you shouldn’t be silent after the incident for days. In our case, we had prepared and we call it routine. Routine press releases daily. You shouldn’t open too much information. Because in many cases, that’s kind of sensitive information, right? What happened in which place. But you shouldn’t also be totally silent. So you should really feel and feel the balance. What to disclose, what don’t disclose. And that’s also very critical. About the communication with different parties involved, it includes already. In subsea cable cases, it includes, of course, the Navy, the military side. Those algorithms and procedures also have to be established before any incidents to be in place, and it also requires training, requires preparation, should be also algorithms written on a paper, trained, drilled, et cetera. So it’s all about preparation. And then in a practice, in the worst case, of course, when an incident happens, you can try it in real life, and there are lessons always. So like any preparation, any plans, who said, Truman said, that any plans go to waste, but the most important is to do the plans.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. And we’ll come back to this plan and prepare issue later, but I now would like to come back to you, Steiner, about, we’ve heard already how it is important to be able to respond as quickly as possible to minimize disruption. So my question to you is, from a technological standpoint, what are some of the emerging tools or innovations that you see as most promising for detecting, mitigating, or responding to threats to subsea cables?

Steinar Bjornstad: Yeah. And the answer, I think, is actually to combine a lot of tools, to monitor, combining several tools, getting a lot of data. And I think I would like to tell a story how this started. It started with trawlers, probably. We didn’t actually know it was cable cuts, and what was it? We just noticed the light went off, and what happened? And then the first tool that came at hand was AIS information. That is GPS information sent from vessels, also containing some information about their activity like, for example, trolling. And by actively monitoring the activity around our cables, we now have a knowledge of what is going on, which vessels are moving around these cables. But that is on the surface, not underwater, not subsea. And some of these vessels, they just turn off their AIS information. So it’s still challenging. And then we started exploring fiber sensing. Fiber sensing actually means that the fiber works as a microphone or an array of microphones. So we can listen underwater to what is going on. By doing this, we are able to see and listen if a troller is approaching. And we can see it like two kilometers away. So we actually see the subsea activity. And that really enables us to take action very early. But the thing is that trollers, they are crossing the cable like ten times every day. It can be as much as that. So what we actually need to know is also if the cable is hit. Because normally this is okay to pass over the cable because it’s buried. And it should be well-buried, protected. But we can’t control the environment. And there are water currents that may make the cable exposed. So we use a different fiber sensing technology that now also gives us statistics on small hits. And by doing this, we can also see where the cable may be vulnerable. So, combining all these technologies, we know where the cable may be vulnerable, if there is something approaching these vulnerable points, and also statistics on what is going on over the cable, what type of vessels are crossing. So today, most of our network is actually covered with fiber sensing techniques, and we have quite a good overview of what is going on.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: So I would say that, would you say that situational awareness, if you want, has improved significantly in recent years, thanks to technological innovations? Yeah? Okay, good. Thank you for that. And Camino, I’d like to come back to you, and building on the insights shared by panelists, as well as drawing from your own research with Unidear, what are some additional other policy or technical approaches that you’ve seen states and other stakeholders exploring to strengthen the protection and resilience of subsea cables?

Camino Kavanagh: Okay, so basically what we did in the research, we broke government approaches down into three different areas. So how government actions, whether it be policy, regulatory, or operational activity, how it contributes to the actual resilience capacities of the systems themselves. So we looked at the absorptive capacities, which would be the kind of preparedness, ensuring all the procedures and protocols, the regulation and so forth, including many of the best practices that Kent mentioned, and that they are in place in the event that something happens. And now the systems are actually built bearing in mind that something will eventually happen, whether it be regardless of the cause. So the second area that we looked at was the responsive capacities of the system. So what are governments doing to actually prepare and support some of the responses required, and I think Sandra mentioned issues related to repair capabilities and capacities. I think the previous panel discussed workforce challenges and so forth. Industry has a significant focus on workforce at the moment, trying to attract young talent into the industry, but it’s difficult. Also governments need to do the same, and we also have to bear in mind that there are some very small governments, small countries that have limited capacities and that have limited resources, so being able to invest in DAS and so forth is a luxury, and one also has to bear in mind that it also has jurisdictional complications, so there are lots of challenges on that front. Also within the restorative capacities, we are seeing that a number of states are actually looking and are investing in market analysis and so forth to see where it would be best, where the better use of their resources would lie and so forth. There are a range of other issues there in that rubric that we touched upon, which I can come back to. The final tranche that we looked at, or the final area, was in adaptive capacities, and we also often forget about those, but I think colleagues here have also talked about learning from incidents, regardless of the cause again, what can we learn from those, and how do we adapt? How do we adapt our national structures, procedures, regulations, and so forth, to be able to prepare and respond to incidents should they happen? And a final thing that cuts across these different areas is that we’ve been talking mainly about the submersed part of the subsea cable system. We’ve touched upon it slightly, but there’s also the network layer, the supply chain issues, a range of other issues. There’s the repair fleet, the store, the supplies, and so forth. So there are a range of different areas and I think connecting these both through government action in our crisis management, emergency planning and so forth is absolutely critical and I don’t think any government is there yet. So how you bring together all of those elements but with working in conjunction with industry as well as academia is absolutely fundamental.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you Camino. Sandra, I’d like to come back to you with a follow-up question on, you know, given also your role within the advisory body on submarine cable resilience, how do you see international initiatives such as this one foster better cooperation and strengthen the resilience of subsea cable infrastructure?

Sandra Maximiano: So that’s one of the main purposes of the advisory body for submarine cable resilience. And that is one main purpose because definitely collaboration is vital in this case. So to enhance connectivity, to stimulate innovation and promote resilience of submarine cables, and if you look at all these, they are multifaceted tasks and they require collaboration. So across different organizations. So we need governments, we need industry, we need academia and international organizations to work together. So over the past year, ANACOM has deepened our partnerships, recognizing that each player plays a unique role. For instance, governments and regulators create enabling frameworks, as I also mentioned before. Academia advances research and innovation, it’s extremely important. Industry builds and operates vital critical infrastructure. So we need all to work together. And having said this, the challenge is in ensuring that these diverse players speak the same language. And sometimes it’s very difficult because, of course, all of these players, they have their own… interests, they maximize, now speaking like an economist, maximize their own utility and interests, but we need to align their efforts to hard a common goal. And the advisory bodies is an example, it’s a multi-stakeholder forum where we try to do that. So we try to have all these organizations together and working together and trying to align our language for this common goal. So at TANACOM we see this as first-hand and we are very actively fostering an ecosystem that encourage investment in submarine cables and associated infrastructure. We remain committed in leading this agenda at both European and international levels. At European level we do it mainly through BEREC, the body of European regulators for electronic communications and in collaboration with European Commission. In BEREC, for example, TANACOM is a co-leader of the BEREC report on domestic submarine cables in different member states, together with a national regulatory authority from France, ARCEP. We are also very active at European Union Agency for Cybersecurity and this is an important topic there as well. And finally, as mentioned, I’m very proud to co-chair the International Advisory Group for Submarine Cable Resilience, which, as I mentioned, provides a unique global platform for collaboration. So the International Advisory Body, for some that maybe are still not familiar, was launched by the International Telecommunication Union in partnership with the International Cable Protection Committee, ICPC. And this partnership is a significant and fortunate development, combining the ITU’s capacity to promote worldwide dialogue on digital matters with ICPC’s expertise in submarine cable resilience. which I believe to be a very fortunate and needed collaboration. In addition, 40 outstanding personalities from both the public and private sectors across the world are part of the advisory body. So this ensures a diverse knowledge and experience, including contributions from countries ranging from large economies to small island states. So this diversity is extremely important. The role of the advisory body is to promote these open conversations, build trust for the benefit of global community. And we aim at ensuring that discussions are based on technical merit and best practice. I think in my personal view as well, I think we should give special attention to regions, countries and remote islands where economic incentives for prompt response mechanisms are lower. But, of course, their response is important for everyone. So the incentives are there. So we should work in collaboration to increase the response capacity of these small states. The advisory body has made very decisive progress. In particular, I would like to mention in February in Abuja, Nigeria, the International Submarine Cable Resilience Summit. And the body approved the Abuja Declaration, making a key milestone for submarine cable resilience and paving the way for greater international cooperation. Secondly, the body established clear priorities for 2025-26 and decided to form three thematic working groups responsible for deliverable concrete outcomes. These groups will address submarine cable resilience from multiple complementary perspectives. One of the working groups will focus on resilience by design, examining the importance of ensuring service continuity through redundant and diverse communities. communication routes, another working group will focus on timely deployment and repairing of submarine cable systems, exploring how regulatory measures can expedite this process, and the third working group will be dedicated to risk identification, monitoring, and mitigation. So with this framework, we’ll assess the application of new technologies and monitoring systems. So I think it’s, as I said, it’s composed by experts from different regions and stakeholders, and given the progress that we made so far, I’m totally confident that the advisory body will remain committed to ensuring the submarine cables are safe and resilient. So just to conclude, preparing for the future, and especially in this matter, is not a task of one individual body. We must work together, and we share responsibility among regulators, industry, academia, and international communities. So we should cooperate openly, pragmatically, and globally in this case.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you, Sandra. Kent, I’d like to come back to you for a last question. Now with growing international attention to subsea infrastructure protection, how can new initiatives complement and avoid duplicating existing efforts like those led by ICPC and others?

Kent Bressie: Thank you, Giacomo. Well, first, I’d like to start just by noting that I think Sandra laid out very clearly the amazing collaboration that we have between the ITU and the ICPC under her leadership and that of Osun Tejani, who was on our prior panel, and I think that can be a model for leveraging the industry expertise and experience of the ICPC. PC without duplicating it. But I think it’s also important to understand, Sandra was very generous and helpful in describing the advisory body, but I’m not sure that everyone has a good understanding of what the ICPC does either. So I thought I’d note just briefly that the ICPC was founded in 1958, and it’s the world’s leading organization promoting submarine cable protection and resilience. It’s an NGO that works with its members, governments, international organizations, other marine industries, and the scientific community on a number of key tasks. First, to identify and mitigate risks of natural and human damage to cables. The ICPC has developed the world’s leading databases of cable damage information, and also repair time frames, which are key inputs for the work of the advisory body. The ICPC has developed recommendations and the best practices for governments that I mentioned earlier for the entire cable project lifecycle. The ICPC promotes scientific research regarding cables in the marine environment. This is even more critical in light of the BBNJ agreement under the Law of the Sea Convention. And the ICPC just published in partnership with the United Nations Environment Program World Climate Monitoring Center a report titled Submarine Cables and Marine Biodiversity, which we had very much promoted and provided resources for as a resource for governments as they implement the BBNJ agreement. We also work to promote, and this is particularly my task, the rule of law for the oceans, particularly ratification and implementation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. And also, as Camino was mentioning, the 1884 Cable Protection Convention on which there is renewed focus. So the ICPC has more than 240 members from approximately 75 countries. Those are industry representatives, but the ICPC also has about 20 government observers, and we welcome more formal government observers, but also engagement even for those governments who are not observers. So we see, as I noted before, a need for continuing engagement and communication. And this is not just between the ICPC and governments and other marine stakeholders, but also the regional cable protection committees that focus on more localized issues around the world. These aren’t formally subsidiaries of the ICPC, but we coordinate closely with them to avoid duplication of work. We have regional cable protection committees that are very active in submarine cables association, the North American Submarine Cable Association, recently established committees in Africa, and the Oceanic Submarine Cable Association. We do not have regional cable protection committees in that area. The ICPC and these other organizations are all keen to work with governments on a range of initiatives and don’t view the recommendations and principles as they advance in a proprietary fashion. As I noted before, the fact that the New York statement included recommendations the ICPC had previously articulated was very flattering, but we would like to see greater adoption by more and more bodies of that. So other ICPC recent engagements, obviously the international advisory body is a key focus for us. co-executive secretary and we’re grateful for the leadership of our co-chairs who are with us today. We held a critical Law of the Sea workshop for our members and regional academics in Singapore last year with the support of the Australian and Singapore governments looking at key issues with the BDDNJ agreement, regulatory and permitting issues, and security among others. We have worked with the UNODC to develop cable resilience plans in the Indian Ocean region and it’s a really interesting and helpful model I think for a lot of countries in considering how to bring together stakeholders to think more in a more integrated way about connectivity and cable protection. And then I serve on the International Law Association’s Committee on Submarine Cables and Pipelines which is developing guidelines to address prevention, monitoring, and responses under international law to intentional cable damage. As I noted before, we’re unlikely to get a new treaty addressing some of these issues but the ICPC’s view is that countries have existing tools under international law that they can and should use and we certainly point to the government of Finland as having made good use of those tools. So finally there’s a need for better communication and coordination on issues and multilateral processes so these aren’t just sort of looking at best practices initiatives but also looking at collaborating on some critical issues and other fora globally. These include work in the International Seabed Authority to ensure cable protection and resilience in relation to deep sea mining which is increasingly an issue given the push for critical minerals. and development of green technologies, the impact of the new BBNJ agreement on cable routing and permitting, and cable damage by dark fleet ships, which we remain concerned is something that the international community, including the IMO has not yet been able to address effectively. So in general, I think we have the data analysis, recommendations, and potential legal tools that we need,

Karianne Tung: and which shouldn’t necessarily be duplicated, but we need much better and more comprehensive global implementation. Thank you.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you, Kent. We have just a couple of minutes before we have to wrap up this panel. So before I share with you some concluding remarks from my notes, I just wanted to give the panelists literally 20 to 30 seconds maximum, if there is one key takeaway that you would like the audience to walk away after this hour and a half discussing subsea cables, what would that be? And you can only add to whatever the other person has said. So starting with you, Camino.

Camino Kavanagh: Prepare and exercise your preparedness.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you.

Session video: Be prepared, monitor what is going on, situational awareness.

Evijs Taube: I would mention again, this dust systems, which were mentioned. So every cable, existing cable is a big asset, and we can call it a big sensor. If we install, already installed, also on the new cables, distributed or centralized, whatever integrated system of such a sensors in a particular area, for example, Baltic Sea, which is very compact sea. Some call it Baltic Lake as a test bed. And that would give a big benefit, not only protecting the cables, but to understand what is going on under the water. There is a shadow fleet, there is normal fleet, there is other fleet, but nobody knows what is happening. If shadow fleet switches off the AIS system, it goes invisible. with such sensors, we can immediately see something better.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. Sandra?

Sandra Maximiano: And as I said, I think collaboration is the key. This is a very important matter. It’s a multi-stakeholder issue and we should work together and, as I said, involve everyone, governments, academia, regulators, international organizations, and increase awareness and, of course, work on the best practices. I think booklets of best practices to act are very important and especially some countries are at a different speed, but in this issue we should all try to align the speed that we move on because, as I said, small states, remote islands, they can’t be left alone because it will have a negative impact for all of us.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. Kent, any final thoughts on your side?

Kent Bressie: Yes. Convene and communicate with stakeholders. Negotiations are really a complicated place.

Giacomo Persi Paoli: Thank you. So, very quickly, because time is up, what I took away from this hour and a half is the following. Strengthening the resilience of subsea cable is a team sport. It’s a team sport that requires different players knowing exactly what to do and working together as a team. No individual player can really achieve this ambitious goal without working with others. But also that resilience has different components. One is protection. Protection is key, but it’s also necessary, but it’s not sufficient. It has to be matched with adequate planning, because no matter how well we protect our cables, incidents are going to happen, and it’s important to have plans that are well thought in advance, so resiliency cannot be improvised. It has to be made by design through careful planning. But while planning is essential, plans are useless unless they are put in practice through concrete measures of preparedness, which include dialogue and discussions and cooperation between states, between public and private cooperation. And this cooperation needs to be tested through exercises, through crisis management drills that really bring to the surface all of the possible mechanisms that need to be improved, because ultimately the last important pillar is the pillar of response that needs to be effective, needs to be quick, in order to minimize disruption and make sure that we work towards resilience, redundancy, and ultimately continuity of service. With that, I hope that the summary does not do justice to an hour and a half in discussion, but hopefully it touches on the key points, and we’re out of time. I do invite you to approach our speakers and experts after the session if you would like to ask more questions. All is left for me to do is to thank you, the audience, for engaging or for being here in person and online, the government of Norway, not only for being amazing hosts, but also for partnering with UNIDIR in organizing this session, and of course, last but not least, to our excellent experts and speakers that took their time to share their knowledge with us. So please join me in a round of applause for our speakers. Thank you.

Agreement points

Critical Infrastructure Dependency

Speakers

– Giacomo Persi Paoli
– Karianne Tung
– Bosun Tijani
– Liisa-Ly Pakosta

Arguments

Subsea cables carry over 99% of global intercontinental data traffic, making them critical digital infrastructure

Digital society is completely dependent on submarine cables for healthcare, education, transport systems

Submarine cables are not just technical assets but the most important critical infrastructure globally

Estonia as a fully digital state faces actual threats to government services when cables are cut

Summary

All speakers unanimously agree that subsea cables represent critical infrastructure that modern digital society cannot function without, carrying the vast majority of global data traffic and supporting essential services

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

International Cooperation Necessity

Speakers

– Karianne Tung
– Jarno Syrjala
– Bosun Tijani
– Liisa-Ly Pakosta
– Sandra Maximiano

Arguments

Cross-border cooperation is crucial since submarine cables cross national borders and international waters

International cooperation through NATO, EU, and ITU helps build resilience and response capabilities

Many countries and regions lack expertise and frameworks to address cable protection

Need for universal set of rules to protect citizens across all continents

ITU Advisory Body provides global platform for collaboration between public and private sectors

Summary

Strong consensus that submarine cable protection requires extensive international cooperation due to the cross-border nature of the infrastructure and varying national capabilities

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory

Public-Private Partnership Requirements

Speakers

– Karianne Tung
– Jarno Syrjala
– Kent Bressie

Arguments

Close cooperation between private sector and civil/defense authorities maximizes knowledge and strength

Solid public-private partnership is one of the most important aspects of telecommunications resilience

Need for better awareness and communication between submarine cable operators, marine industries, and governments

Summary

Clear agreement that effective subsea cable protection requires strong partnerships between government and private sector, combining their respective expertise and capabilities

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory

Resilience by Design Philosophy

Speakers

– Bosun Tijani
– Sandra Maximiano
– Steinar Bjornstad

Arguments

Resilience should be intentional and built into design, not an afterthought

Building redundancy through multiple geographical diverse cable routes and avoiding strategic choke points

Multiple cables and optical switching enable quick traffic rerouting when cables fail

Summary

Consensus that resilience must be intentionally designed into cable systems from the beginning, incorporating redundancy and multiple pathways rather than being added as an afterthought

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Preparation and Planning Importance

Speakers

– Evijs Taube
– Camino Kavanagh
– Sandra Maximiano

Arguments

Preparation through table exercises and drills, though real incidents provide irreplaceable learning

Prepare and exercise your preparedness

Need for collective mechanisms to support repair capacity, especially for regions lacking resources

Summary

Strong agreement that effective cable protection requires extensive advance preparation, including exercises, drills, and pre-positioned resources for rapid response

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Similar viewpoints

These speakers share the view that the threat landscape has fundamentally changed, with increased intentional attacks on subsea cables, particularly in the context of current geopolitical tensions and conflicts

Speakers

– Karianne Tung
– Liisa-Ly Pakosta
– Camino Kavanagh

Arguments

Recent incidents with damages to subsea cables in Baltic Sea and Red Sea highlight increased vulnerability

Dramatic rise in ‘accidents’ during full-scale war in Ukraine, with intentional cable cutting by Russian shadow fleet

Historical perspective shows 60% natural causes, 35% unintentional accidents, 5% malicious activity, but intentional threats are increasing

Topics

Cybersecurity | Infrastructure

Both emphasize the potential of advanced sensing technologies, particularly fiber sensing and distributed acoustic sensing, to transform cables into comprehensive monitoring systems

Speakers

– Steinar Bjornstad
– Session video

Arguments

Combining multiple monitoring tools including AIS information and fiber sensing provides comprehensive situational awareness

Distributed acoustic sensing can turn fiber optic cables into virtual hydrophones for ocean monitoring

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Both speakers highlight the disparity in global capabilities for cable protection, with particular concern for developing countries and small island states that lack resources and expertise

Speakers

– Bosun Tijani
– Sandra Maximiano

Arguments

Many countries and regions lack expertise and frameworks to address cable protection

Small island states and remote regions need special attention where economic incentives for response are lower

Topics

Infrastructure | Development

Unexpected consensus

Technology Integration for Monitoring

Speakers

– Steinar Bjornstad
– Evijs Taube
– Session video

Arguments

Fiber sensing technology allows cables to work as underwater microphones, detecting approaching threats

Importance of established communication lines with international partners and 24/7 contact protocols

Existing global fiber optic cable network can serve as comprehensive monitoring system for multiple applications

Explanation

Unexpected strong consensus emerged around leveraging existing cable infrastructure for comprehensive monitoring beyond just communication purposes, including environmental monitoring and threat detection. This represents a shift from viewing cables purely as communication infrastructure to seeing them as multi-purpose sensing networks

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Regulatory Framework Challenges

Speakers

– Kent Bressie
– Sandra Maximiano

Arguments

Government policies can potentially undermine cable protection through excessive delays and clustering requirements

Need for regulation to keep pace with technological innovation and high-capacity connectivity demands

Explanation

Unexpected consensus that well-intentioned government regulations can actually harm cable security, with both speakers acknowledging that regulatory frameworks need to be carefully designed to support rather than hinder cable protection efforts

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion revealed remarkably strong consensus across all speakers on fundamental issues: the critical importance of subsea cables to modern society, the necessity of international cooperation, the requirement for public-private partnerships, and the need for intentional resilience design. There was also broad agreement on the changing threat landscape and the importance of preparation and planning.

Consensus level

Very high level of consensus with no significant disagreements identified. This strong alignment suggests the subsea cable protection community has developed shared understanding of challenges and solutions, which bodes well for coordinated international action. The consensus spans technical, policy, and governance dimensions, indicating mature thinking about this critical infrastructure challenge.

Different viewpoints

Approach to cable location transparency vs. security

Speakers

– Kent Bressie

Arguments

Removing cables from nautical charts is misguided and would increase risks from fishing and anchoring

Summary

Kent Bressie strongly opposes government efforts to remove cable locations from nautical charts for security reasons, arguing this would increase the primary causes of damage (70% from fishing/anchoring). However, no other speakers directly addressed this specific policy debate, suggesting potential disagreement exists but wasn’t explicitly debated.

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory

Unexpected differences

Limited explicit debate on regulatory approaches

Speakers

– Kent Bressie
– Sandra Maximiano

Arguments

Government policies can potentially undermine cable protection through excessive delays and clustering requirements

Need for regulation to keep pace with technological innovation and high-capacity connectivity demands

Explanation

Unexpectedly, there was minimal debate about the balance between security-focused regulation and operational efficiency. Kent Bressie warned about over-regulation creating delays and vulnerabilities, while Sandra Maximiano advocated for proactive regulatory frameworks. This fundamental tension between security and efficiency wasn’t directly addressed or debated.

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion showed remarkable consensus on key issues: the critical importance of subsea cables, need for international cooperation, public-private partnerships, resilience by design, and preparation for incidents. The few areas of potential disagreement were not directly debated.

Disagreement level

Very low disagreement level. This consensus likely reflects the technical and collaborative nature of the subsea cable community, but may also indicate insufficient exploration of challenging policy trade-offs. The high level of agreement could facilitate implementation of recommended measures, but might also suggest that more difficult questions about resource allocation, regulatory balance, and competing priorities need deeper examination in future discussions.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

These speakers share the view that the threat landscape has fundamentally changed, with increased intentional attacks on subsea cables, particularly in the context of current geopolitical tensions and conflicts

Speakers

– Karianne Tung
– Liisa-Ly Pakosta
– Camino Kavanagh

Arguments

Recent incidents with damages to subsea cables in Baltic Sea and Red Sea highlight increased vulnerability

Dramatic rise in ‘accidents’ during full-scale war in Ukraine, with intentional cable cutting by Russian shadow fleet

Historical perspective shows 60% natural causes, 35% unintentional accidents, 5% malicious activity, but intentional threats are increasing

Topics

Cybersecurity | Infrastructure

Both emphasize the potential of advanced sensing technologies, particularly fiber sensing and distributed acoustic sensing, to transform cables into comprehensive monitoring systems

Speakers

– Steinar Bjornstad
– Session video

Arguments

Combining multiple monitoring tools including AIS information and fiber sensing provides comprehensive situational awareness

Distributed acoustic sensing can turn fiber optic cables into virtual hydrophones for ocean monitoring

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Both speakers highlight the disparity in global capabilities for cable protection, with particular concern for developing countries and small island states that lack resources and expertise

Speakers

– Bosun Tijani
– Sandra Maximiano

Arguments

Many countries and regions lack expertise and frameworks to address cable protection

Small island states and remote regions need special attention where economic incentives for response are lower

Topics

Infrastructure | Development

Key takeaways

Subsea cables carrying 99% of global intercontinental data are critical infrastructure requiring urgent protection due to increasing intentional threats, particularly from geopolitical tensions and hybrid warfare

Resilience must be built by design through four key pillars: protection, planning, preparedness, and response – it cannot be improvised or treated as an afterthought

Strengthening subsea cable security is a ‘team sport’ requiring coordinated multi-stakeholder cooperation between governments, industry, academia, and international organizations

Public-private partnerships are essential, with governments needing to understand industry capabilities while taking actions only they can perform (political/military responses)

Technical innovations like fiber sensing and distributed acoustic sensing are revolutionizing threat detection and situational awareness for cable monitoring

Regional cooperation frameworks (North Sea 2024, Baltic Sea 2025) demonstrate effective models for cross-border collaboration on cable protection

Redundancy and route diversity are critical for resilience, with countries needing multiple cable connections rather than single points of failure

Repair capacity and preparedness require significant investment in specialized vessels, equipment, spare parts, and trained personnel

Different regions face vastly different threat landscapes, requiring tailored approaches while maintaining global coordination standards

Resolutions and action items

ITU Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience established three working groups for 2025-26: resilience by design, timely deployment/repair, and risk identification/monitoring

Abuja Declaration approved in February 2025 as milestone for international cooperation on submarine cable resilience

Countries committed to implementing EU Action Plan on Cable Security with four objectives: prevention, detection, response/repair, and deterrence

Multiple countries signed New York Declaration on Submarine Cable Security to promote integrity and accessibility

Norway establishing dedicated cooperation between private sector and civil/defense authorities with clarified roles and responsibilities

Nigeria setting up dedicated desk within communications commission for cable protection protocols and international coordination

Finland transposing NIS2 directive into national law (April 2025) with comprehensive telecommunications resilience requirements

Unresolved issues

Limited repair capacity globally, particularly shortage of specialized vessels and trained personnel for cable maintenance

Lack of adequate frameworks and expertise in many developing countries and small island states for cable protection

Insufficient economic incentives for prompt response mechanisms in remote regions where commercial viability is lower

Debate over removing cables from nautical charts for security versus safety concerns (industry strongly opposes removal)

Challenges in attributing responsibility for cable incidents and distinguishing between intentional and unintentional damage

Regulatory delays and bureaucratic obstacles that can undermine cable protection and repair efforts

Workforce development challenges in attracting young talent to the submarine cable industry

Coordination difficulties across different jurisdictions and legal frameworks for international cable systems

Suggested compromises

Collective mechanisms to support repair capacity for regions and countries lacking resources, with shared investment in repair vessels and joint capacity

Balanced approach to cable route planning that avoids both strategic choke points and excessive clustering while meeting connectivity needs

Graduated response protocols that prioritize critical infrastructure restoration based on national security and public welfare importance

Flexible licensing and permitting procedures that balance security requirements with operational efficiency for repairs

Regional cooperation models that can be adapted to different geographic and political contexts while maintaining core protection principles

Public-private information sharing frameworks that protect sensitive operational details while enabling effective threat response

Technology sharing arrangements where advanced countries assist developing nations with monitoring capabilities and expertise transfer

Resilience should be intentional. It shouldn’t be something that is afterthought… I was surprised at how, of course, we were fortunate, the private sector… came together. But as a minister, I didn’t have any answer to give to people. And people don’t often complain about companies when you have natural disasters. It’s the government that they look to for answer.

Speaker

Bosun Tijani (Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy of Nigeria)

Reason

This comment fundamentally reframed the discussion from technical protection measures to governance accountability. Tijani’s personal experience during the West African cable cuts revealed a critical gap between technical preparedness and political responsibility, highlighting how governments are held accountable for infrastructure failures regardless of ownership structures.

Impact

This shifted the conversation toward the need for proactive government frameworks and sparked subsequent discussions about public-private partnerships, regulatory preparedness, and the importance of having clear protocols before incidents occur. It influenced other speakers to emphasize planning and preparedness rather than just reactive measures.

Let us remember that it was 1884 when the Paris Convention of Undersea Telegraphic Cables was agreed… So this is actually the situation where we are just now, as well, within the broader geopolitical situation. What we see around this area… that the Russian shadow fleet is cutting down our connections.

Speaker

Liisa-Ly Pakosta (Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs of Estonia)

Reason

This historical parallel was profound because it connected current geopolitical tensions to a 140-year pattern of intentional cable disruption during conflicts. By referencing the 1884 convention, Pakosta demonstrated that cable protection challenges aren’t new but have evolved with geopolitical contexts, directly naming current threat actors.

Impact

This comment elevated the discussion from technical and regulatory issues to explicit geopolitical framing, legitimizing direct discussion of state-sponsored threats. It influenced the tone of subsequent technical discussions by establishing the current security environment as fundamentally different from peacetime operations.

Statistics from 1882: 60% of damage caused by natural events, 35% by unintentional acts due to accidents at sea or force majeure, and 5% due to gross negligence and some malign activities… those statistics wouldn’t have changed very much, although… the stats between natural causes and unintentional damage… would slightly change… it’s very hard to ascertain responsibility for some of the incidents.

Speaker

Camino Kavanagh (UNIDIR expert)

Reason

This historical data analysis was intellectually striking because it revealed the consistency of threat patterns across 140+ years while highlighting the fundamental challenge of attribution in cable incidents. It provided empirical grounding for policy discussions while acknowledging the inherent difficulty in distinguishing between intentional and unintentional damage.

Impact

This comment provided crucial context that influenced how other speakers framed their responses, moving away from assumptions about threat prevalence toward evidence-based discussions. It also highlighted the attribution challenge that became a recurring theme in technical monitoring discussions.

We see a renewed push by some governments to remove cables from nautical charts. This is woefully misguided. Given that approximately 70 percent of cable damage each year is caused by fishing and anchors, removing cables from nautical charts would significantly increase those risks and make it impossible for cable owners to pursue damages claims.

Speaker

Kent Bressie (ICPC legal advisor)

Reason

This comment challenged a counterintuitive security approach that could actually increase vulnerabilities. It demonstrated how security-through-obscurity thinking can backfire in maritime infrastructure, where transparency actually enhances protection by enabling avoidance of accidental damage.

Impact

This practical insight influenced the discussion toward evidence-based security measures rather than intuitive but potentially counterproductive approaches. It reinforced the theme that effective protection requires understanding actual threat vectors rather than theoretical ones.

Every cable, existing cable is a big asset, and we can call it a big sensor. If we install… distributed or centralized… integrated system of such sensors in a particular area, for example, Baltic Sea… that would give a big benefit, not only protecting the cables, but to understand what is going on under the water.

Speaker

Evijs Taube (Latvia State Radio and Television Center)

Reason

This comment introduced a paradigm shift from viewing cables as passive infrastructure to active sensing networks. It suggested transforming the problem from protecting vulnerable assets to creating a comprehensive underwater surveillance system, turning the infrastructure itself into a security solution.

Impact

This technical insight influenced the discussion toward dual-use technologies and comprehensive situational awareness. It connected to earlier discussions about distributed acoustic sensing and elevated the conversation from individual cable protection to regional maritime domain awareness.

We need a combination of national, regional, and international cooperation to achieve effective resilience measures… Threats to subsea communication cables are not limited by national borders, so international cooperation is vital for protection of subsea cables.

Speaker

Karianne Tung (Norwegian Minister of Digitalisation)

Reason

While cooperation was mentioned throughout, Tung’s framing established the multi-level governance structure needed for transnational infrastructure. Her concrete examples of North Sea and Baltic Sea cooperation agreements provided practical models for how abstract cooperation principles could be operationalized.

Impact

This set the framework for the entire discussion, with subsequent speakers building on the multi-stakeholder, multi-level cooperation theme. It influenced how other participants framed their national experiences within broader international contexts.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by establishing three critical frameworks: (1) the historical continuity of cable threats with contemporary geopolitical urgency, (2) the shift from reactive technical protection to proactive governance accountability, and (3) the transformation of cables from passive infrastructure to active sensing networks. The most impactful insight was Tijani’s reframing of resilience as intentional governance responsibility, which influenced subsequent speakers to emphasize preparedness and planning over purely technical solutions. The historical perspectives from Pakosta and Kavanagh provided crucial context that legitimized current security concerns while grounding them in empirical evidence. Together, these comments elevated the discussion from a technical workshop to a strategic policy dialogue that balanced historical lessons, current geopolitical realities, and future technological possibilities.

How can we develop well-working mechanisms that are innovative and willing to experiment for protecting critical undersea infrastructure?

Speaker

Jarno Syrjala

Explanation

There’s a need for urgency in developing innovative technological solutions and experimental approaches to protect subsea cables, suggesting current methods may be insufficient

What is the optimal investment strategy for repair ships and talent given that cable incidents don’t happen frequently?

Speaker

Bosun Tijani

Explanation

The challenge of making calculated investments in repair capacity and skilled workforce when incidents are infrequent but critical when they occur needs further analysis

How can we better understand the statistics and data on malicious activities targeting subsea cables?

Speaker

Camino Kavanagh (implied by Giacomo Persi Paoli)

Explanation

There’s limited visibility into unsuccessful malicious attempts against subsea cables, making it difficult to assess the true scope of intentional threats

How can countries with limited resources and capacities invest in advanced monitoring technologies like DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing)?

Speaker

Camino Kavanagh

Explanation

Small governments and countries have limited resources to invest in expensive monitoring technologies, creating gaps in global protection coverage

How can we address the workforce challenges in the subsea cable industry to attract young talent?

Speaker

Camino Kavanagh

Explanation

Both industry and governments face difficulties in attracting young professionals to work in the subsea cable sector, which is critical for long-term resilience

How can we better integrate crisis management and emergency planning across different elements of subsea cable systems (submersed parts, network layer, supply chain, repair fleet)?

Speaker

Camino Kavanagh

Explanation

No government has yet successfully integrated all aspects of subsea cable protection into comprehensive crisis management systems

How can we ensure regulatory frameworks keep pace with rapid technological changes, particularly AI and high-capacity connectivity demands?

Speaker

Sandra Maximiano

Explanation

The rapid evolution of technology, especially AI requiring massive computational capacity, is outpacing regulatory frameworks designed to ensure cable resilience

How can we address cable damage by dark fleet ships through international mechanisms like the IMO?

Speaker

Kent Bressie

Explanation

The international community has not yet effectively addressed the threat posed by dark fleet vessels that can damage cables while operating without proper identification

How can we implement integrated distributed acoustic sensing systems across compact sea areas like the Baltic Sea?

Speaker

Evijs Taube

Explanation

Creating a comprehensive underwater monitoring network using existing cables as sensors could provide better situational awareness but requires coordination and technical implementation

How can we develop mechanisms to ensure continuity of dialogue between government and industry stakeholders despite personnel rotation?

Speaker

Giacomo Persi Paoli

Explanation

The challenge of maintaining effective public-private partnerships when government personnel frequently rotate to different positions needs systematic solutions