A couple of scoops by a mechanical digger disrupted international web services for many Finns earlier this week and brought home to the public and officials alike how vulnerable the internet can be. The incident on Wednesday was especially serious because the digger also cut through a back-up cable linking Finland to Sweden, even though regulations mandate that the two should be widely separated.
"The regulations are right. If they are observed, networks are properly constructed, but at some point carelessness or something else got in the way," was the early evaluation by Ari Karppanen of the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA).
Interviewed by Yle, Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen expressed concern about how vulnerable the nation's internet connections are in many ways.
"What kind of threat is posed to Finland's network environment, for example, by organised crime or terrorism?" Räsänen asked.
In this context, she added that authorities should be given even broader powers to carry out net surveillance. One web security expert, columnist and author Petteri Järvinen, saw Wednesday's disruptions as a stark reminder of how much Finnish society depends on networked services.
"Nobody carries cash. I fear the day when paying by card doesn't work and people can't buy food and get hungry and can't get petrol anywhere," Järvinen said.
High-speed link to Germany
At the start of January, internet service providers will be getting new guidelines, and come under closer scrutiny, aimed at preventing the kind of disruption to web connections that hit many users on Wednesday. During the disruption, which lasted several hours, Elisa re-routed traffic via Tallinn, Estonia, but that link became overloaded.
The bulk of Finland's global net connections are routed through Sweden. Efforts that are being made to make international internet access less vulnerable include a project starting next year to build a new direct high-speed connection between Finland and Germany.
