Norway has established a new defense commission which job will be to assess the contemporary national thread situation. One of the main threads that the commission will try to work out a strategy against is the cyberattack thread from, especially China and Russia, NRK writes.
The commission’s leader will be the former Norwegian Minister of Justice and Public Security Knut Storberget. “We see that the current thread situation is very comprehensive, complex and for many also very complicated,” Knut Storberget tells NRK.
Storberget explains that the new forms of threats call for new methods and warns about measuring the success of the commission’s work merely based on the amount of money which have been allocated for it. The defense commission will assess which possibilities and priorities in security and defense policy that Norway will do best in focusing on to secure safety for Norway in the coming 10-20 years.
Besides the conventional security threads, one of the new concerns will be cyber-attacks. Especially China and Russia are seen as risks in this respect. “Several states, but especially Russia and China, are using several instruments against Norway and Norwegian interests in ways that directly or indirectly challenge our national security interests,” the mandate for the commission reads.
The former Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ine Eriksen Søreide, this summer informed about a successful cyberattack on the Stortingets mail system. An attack which was orchestrated from China.
The Norwegian Minister of Defense, Odd Roger Enoksen, also stresses the severe risk concerning cyber-attacks with regards to the Chinese hacking episode.
“We see how the superpowers’ power play and new technology makes it possible to attack a modern society in a way that can shot down its infrastructure and economy and, in many ways, cause devastating effects,” Odd Roger Enoksen says.
