Telenor Security Report Warns of Heightened Risks in Nordic Region

Telenor Warns of Growing Security Threats in Nordic Region, Calls for Cross-Border Cooperation

Amid escalating geopolitical tensions and increasingly sophisticated digital threats, telecommunications giant Telenor has released its annual Nordic security report, urging a more coordinated regional approach to security and preparedness across Northern Europe.

The report, released from Telenor’s headquarters in Fornebu, Norway, emphasizes the growing interdependence of critical services such as power grids and digital infrastructure while highlighting the need for governments and industry to collaborate in building greater Nordic resilience.

“We are facing a security situation where a crisis can start anywhere and spread everywhere – across sectors, countries and regions,” said Benedicte Schilbred Fasmer, President and CEO of Telenor. “The strength of the Nordic model lies in trust, close cooperation, and robust digital infrastructure. But to remain resilient, we must connect these strengths across borders.”

The comprehensive assessment identifies six primary threat categories that telecommunications providers and critical infrastructure operators must prepare for in 2025: destructive cyberattacks, sabotage of digital and physical infrastructure, foreign influence operations, intelligence gathering targeting critical systems, organized digital financial crime, and advanced online fraud schemes.

“These are not distant threats, but part of the daily threat picture that we and other telecom operators must be prepared to face,” Fasmer noted, underscoring the immediacy of the security challenges.

The report highlights how hybrid threats are fundamentally reshaping the Nordic security landscape, with state-backed and criminal actors increasingly blurring lines between cyberattacks, physical sabotage, and disinformation campaigns. This convergence makes it increasingly difficult for security professionals to distinguish between accidents and deliberate attacks.

Critical infrastructure has emerged as a strategic battleground, according to the assessment. Subsea communications cables, mobile networks, and cloud computing infrastructure—vital components supporting everything from national defense to economic stability—have become prime targets for malicious actors seeking to disrupt Nordic societies.

Recent extreme weather events have also tested the region’s resilience. The report specifically mentions storm Amy, which revealed vulnerabilities in communications networks when power supplies were disrupted, demonstrating how quickly essential services can fail during cascading crises.

Data sovereignty has become another defining security issue across the Nordic region. Questions surrounding the location and governance of sensitive data are driving governments and organizations to invest in sovereign or regionally governed cloud solutions for their most critical information workloads.

Sigvart Voss Eriksen, Executive Vice President and Head of Telenor Nordics, emphasized that building meaningful resilience requires sustained effort and investment. “It requires long-term investment, preparedness and coordination between governments and industry. The Nordic countries already have strong national security and preparedness systems, but a crisis doesn’t care about borders,” said Voss Eriksen.

“To protect our critical functions, we must act as a region. That means predictable funding, aligned frameworks and operations, so that we can prepare and respond together when it matters most,” he added.

The report culminates in a joint call to action for governments and industry across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Telenor urges regional stakeholders to make resilience a Nordic priority, align regulatory frameworks across borders, strengthen cross-border information sharing mechanisms, build redundancy into critical infrastructure systems, and conduct joint exercises to prepare for potential crises.

This assessment comes as NATO continues to emphasize resilience requirements for member states, a particularly relevant concern for Nordic countries given their strategic location and Russia’s increasingly assertive posture in the region.

Telenor’s report draws on expertise from the company’s security specialists across its Nordic operations, analyzing evolving threat landscapes, new attack methodologies, the emergence of cognitive warfare techniques, and the particular vulnerabilities of subsea cables and other critical infrastructure components.

The full Nordic Digital Security 2025 report is available on Telenor’s website and provides additional analysis of lessons from recent security incidents alongside recommendations for strengthening preparedness across the region.