Ukrainian lessons learned highlighted in NESA’s Defender of the Civil Society seminar

NESA organised a seminar on societal resilience with the theme Defender of the Civil Society on Thursday 26^th of March. Around 450 participants, representing NESA’s key stakeholders from both private and public sectors as well as international partners gathered to hear contemporary keynotes and thematic sessions covering different aspects of resilience. A special spotlight was given to the lessons learned from Ukraine, a clear focus point for NESA since the start of the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

NESA invited two specialists from Ukraine, representing NESA’s partner agency and a private telecom operator to give their direct insights to the audience about the different avenues through which Ukraine has been able to keep the civil society functional under the prolonged crisis of war.

Prior to the seminar day the two specialists; Mr. Vasyl Ananyev from the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection (SSSCIP) of Ukraine and Mr. Oleksiy Khahklyuk from Ukrtelecom visited NESA offices, Elisa Oyj and the National Cyber Security Centre of Finland to share updates on the current situation in Ukraine as well as to engage in expert level discussions about resilience practices and critical infrastructure protection on different levels of the society.

Mr. Vasyl Ananyev from the SSSCIP is actively involved in the identification, categorisation and prioritisation of critical infrastructure assets across all different sectors in Ukraine. A special area of focus is also the physical protection of critical infrastructure, done in cooperation with the armed forces and critical infrastructure operators. Situational picture, continuous assessment of criticality and cooperation, both civil-military and public-private are everyday processes for him. These processes also contribute to the agile policy development underway in Ukraine, that are also part of the EU membership process of Ukraine.

Mr. Oleksiy Khahklyuk from Ukrtelecom reflects the prolonged war condition from the perspective of a private business built to optimise service quality, scalability and efficiency. No private business is built to respond to professional attackers and deliberate destruction of corporate assets. In this situation, in front of an existential threat, competition gives way to cooperation and business rivals start to cooperate in order to keep the services running as long as possible and to restore the services as quickly as possible. He also highlighted the role of dedicated and skilled personnel in maintaining telecom services and restoring them, especially in circumstances where they become the targets of attacks.

During the visit at Elisa Corporation the discussions with Mr. Jaakko Wallenius (VP, Resilience and Defence) and Kim Tikkanen (CSO) evolved around the role of telecom services for the civil society, the resilience investments of private companies to meet both the regulative requirements but as well the requirements set by current the security landscape. An important part of the equation is public-private cooperation, through which in Finland critical companies together with authorities create common situational picture and thus ensure common threat perception and a shared plan for the whole society to shift from normal circumstances to severe crisis or war. Public-private cooperation must bring added value to the private sector. In Finland that seems to be the case, as for example in the telecom sector trust-based cooperation is active, even though it is also one of the sectors that is highly regulated.

In the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-FI), hosted by the Deputy Director-General Pekka Jokinen, public-private cooperation in cyber security and support to critical operators were the topics of discussion. The NCSC-FI and the SSSCIP of Ukraine have also a partnership related to cyber security. Mr. Jokinen had just visited the Kyiv Cyber Resilience Forum and engaged with several Ukrainian stakeholders on cyber related lessons learned. Due to the high digitalisation of everything in the society, cyber security is an important domain and an enabler of the resilience of critical companies as well as overall resilience of the society. For this reason, in Finland there are dedicated public-private cooperation platforms for cyber security and resilience.

In the Defender of the Civil Society seminar, presentations from both Ukrainian guests were greatly welcomed and appreciated. The audience valued the opportunity to hear directly from Ukrainians themselves about the efforts through which they have been able to maintain the critical services of the society up and running, for more than four years of brutal war. Great part of the audience represented private and public sectors in Finland. Therefore, it was only fitting that the key messages from Ukraine were delivered also by representatives matching both of those perspectives.

Photo: Pia Inberg
Senior Adviser to the CEO and Supervisory Board, Oleksiy Khakhlyuk, JSC Ukrtelecom; CEO Janne Känkänen, Finnish National Emergency Supply Agency; Head of Unit, Department of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Vasyl Ananyev, SSSCIP; and CEO Taina Susiluoto, Technology Industries of Finland at the Defender of the Civil Society seminar.