Nord Stream 2 blown up, data cables damaged: More and more incidents reveal how vulnerable maritime infrastructure is. How critical is the situation – and what helps?
Submarine cables are the backbone of the digitalized world, says security expert Peters. For a long time, however, no great thought was given to securing them.Nov 20, 2024 | 14:47 min
We need them for our communication, for our energy supply, for our daily lives: data cables, pipelines and other maritime infrastructures are so important for our modern societies that they have long been considered critical – in other words, as particularly worthy of protection.
But are they – particularly protected?
After the damage to two data cables in the Baltic Sea and an underwater power cable between Finland and Estonia, NATO wants to increase patrol – with warships, reconnaissance aircraft, satellites and drones. In an interview with ZDFheute, however, experts use the example of data cables to paint a picture of an infrastructure that is vulnerable and will inevitably remain vulnerable – but in which one can learn how to deal with this vulnerability.
3D visualization of the critical infrastructure on the German territorial sea
The North Sea and Baltic Sea are criss-crossed by important data cables and pipelines.
Source: Expert interviews; SPW; ZDF illustration
How important are data cables – and how are they protected?
“Submarine cables are the backbone of our digitalized world,” says Johannes Peters. He heads the Department of Maritime Security and Strategy at the Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel. More than 90 percent of global data traffic is transported via such cables, says Peters.Accordingly, the way we live, the way we do business, the way we communicate essentially depends on this maritime, and therefore also critical, infrastructure.„
Johannes Peters, Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel
They are practically not protected at all. They are laid on the seabed – “and then that’s it,” says Peters, also because “no great thought” has been given to the protection of the infrastructure for years.
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Can data cables be better protected?
In theory, yes, says Manuel Atug, founder and spokesperson of the independent working group on critical infrastructures (AG KRITIS). It is true that it is fundamentally impossible to always prevent sabotage. “No one can keep a permanent eye on thousands of kilometers of cable, especially under water, detect dangers at an early stage and then avert them preventively.” Nevertheless, there are initially obvious measures that would be possible, including:
- Laying submarine cables several meters below the seabed
- Secrecy of newly laid submarine cables
The problem with such measures is that in practice they have serious disadvantages.
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“Of course, cables are even harder to reach when I let them into the seabed,” says Atug. “And it’s always about building up a chain of hurdles that are so high that an attacker doesn’t want to do it anymore – or too few resources to carry out the attack successfully.”
However, cable operators also need more resources to retrieve the cable for any repairs, says Atug. Even laying the cables below the seabed would involve significantly more effort and higher costs – and would simply not be feasible on rocky ground, for example.
“In the shallow Baltic Sea, laying would even still be possible,” Peters estimates. “But if you go into the Atlantic, at a depth of 6,000, 7,000 meters – we simply have to say goodbye to the idea of actually being able to protect this infrastructure over its entire length.” Even on the rocky seabed
Atug even considers the secrecy of new cable routes to be very dangerous. About 200 cases of damage to submarine cables are registered every year, he says. “Statistically speaking, this may be sabotage,” explains Atug. The majority of the damage, on the other hand, is due to accidents caused by fishing boats.
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“Trawlers have a heavy piece of metal in front of the trawl net so that the safety net sinks as low as possible and does not get any buoyancy,” explains Atug. “If this metal part scrapes across the seabed and runs over a cable, the cable is literally shredded,” says the expert. To prevent this, there must be more information about the cable routes laid, says Atug – not less.
But what helps if we want to reduce our vulnerability?
How we become more resilient in critical infrastructures
The magic word that Manuel Atug and Johannes Peters mention is “resilience”. What is behind it? And how can it be created?
Experts understand “resilience” to mean resilience against the failure of a critical infrastructure. In a “resilient” critical infrastructure, an attack fizzles out as ineffectively as possible, leading to a disruption at most – but by no means to a crisis or a catastrophe.
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One way to become more resilient is redundancies, say experts Atug and Peters. In the area of data cables, this means that if one cable fails, the data traffic simply continues via others. In Germany, seven submarine cables are currently landing at five different locations:
- Markgrafenheide, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: Germany-Denmark 3
- Puttgarden, Schleswig-Holstein: Fehmarn Belt
- Rostock, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: C-Lion1, Elektra-GlobalConnect 1, GlobalConnect-KPN
- Sylt, Schleswig-Holstein: Atlantic Crossing-1
- Sassnitz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: Aurora
- From 2027 Wilhelmshaven, Lower Saxony: IOEMA
“In Germany and Europe, we are therefore relatively redundantly connected,” Peters classifies.
The North Sea and Baltic Sea are criss-crossed by important data cables and pipelines.
Another way to become more resilient is to increase repair capacities, say Peters and Atug. “Repairing a data cable requires special ships that, for example, bring both ends of the cable to the surface, patch them back together there and then lower the cable again,” says Atug.
“There are very few ships that can do this, and they belong to shipping companies, i.e. private sector players,” explains Peters. In the case of the cable damaged in the Baltic Sea in November, they were lucky that such a ship was in Calais and had capacity. The repair took only two weeks, but could have taken much more time, Peters warns.
If Europe were to spend money here and, for example, build three repair ships that would be available at any time as a strategic reserve in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean, this would be a political decision to increase resilience.
Johannes Peters, Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel
Both Atug and Peters also point to the importance of communication. Hybrid threats are aimed at destabilizing the population from within, says Atug. “To prevent this, we need a stable information situation.”
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On the one hand, this requires concrete communication plans for emergencies, says Peters. “The population must know: What happened? How do we deal with this? What does this mean for me? And how long does the repair take now? This is a clear structure that offers security.”
At the same time, however, Atug also expects politicians to hold back with speculation. “With every incident, politicians are currently too quick to point to possible sabotage,” Atug criticizes. “Too often there is unnecessary panic – and in the worst case, real threats are relativized,” complains the expert.
The attack on the Tesla plant in Grünheide at the latest shows that critical infrastructure needs better protection. The traffic light has been working on a corresponding law for some time.
