The Icelandic government is currently in discussions over how to make Iceland more secure against online attacks and other vulnerabilities on the internet. Vísir reports that Ögmundur Jónasson will introduce a proposal at a government meeting tomorrow.
It has recently come to light that Iceland is particularly vulnerable to an internet attack, such as a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), on some of the country’s more important servers. Iceland has not yet engaged in the security measures that other European government agencies have established to protect themselves against online attacks.
A report from 2008 painted a very bleak picture of Iceland’s online vulnerabilities, and it is only now that the matter has reached the table of a government meeting. However, neighbouring Scandinavian countries have established government work groups that focus on net security, and will work closely with the Icelandic government.
Internet attacks on government or media servers need not necessarily be the work of teenaged hackers. Russia was accused of engaging in DDoS attacks against servers in Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008.