His agency has advised energy companies on how to prepare and has experts on hand “24/7” in case of a serious incident, Auväärt said, adding Estonia is working with Latvia and Lithuania on the threat.
Žygimantas Vaičiūnas, Lithuania’s energy minister, said in an interview he expects the switch to be a “smooth process,” but that authorities are nonetheless “prepared for even the worst-case scenarios on the technical level.” A spokesperson for Lithuania’s Energy Ministry said it has taken “additional actions and plans to increase our preparedness.”
Erkki Sapp, member of the management board of Elering, Estonia’s state-owned gas and power grid operator, said it had taken extra precautions such as removing virtual private network (VPN) access for external companies that maintain its systems. The Estonian state “has prepared and takes this very seriously,” he said.
It’s not just cyberattacks the Baltics are preparing for: Sapp said the grid operator was “limiting access to [their] premises,” while Vaičiūnas added Lithuania had set up new “anti-drone systems and … physical protection barriers” around key energy infrastructure.
Baltic energy operators “should absolutely batten down the proverbial hatches,” said Joe Marshall, senior security strategist at Cisco’s Talos cyber threat intelligence division.
“Russia is one of the few nation states on Earth that has actively meddled in the power grids of another sovereign nation,” Marshall said. “They clearly have the means, the capability, the knowledge to conduct [such] a cyber operation … that [fact] can never be overlooked, unfortunately.”
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