Municipalities and critical infrastructure operators from all over Finland join national cyber exercise

Municipalities and operators involved in Finland's critical infrastructure took part in the first national cyber exercise of the year at Jamk University of Applied Sciences between 3 and 7 February 2025. The exercise brought together cybersecurity, management and communications professionals especially from the north of Finland and Northern Ostrobothnia.

 "Almost 40 employees from the City of Rovaniemi attended the exercise, including senior management. Our service providers, ICT providers and critical operators from water and electricity companies also joined in,” says Harri Ihalainen, Chief Information Officer at Rovaniemi, who was one of the participants.

Four other municipalities, their service providers, and three critical infrastructure operators participated in the exercise in addition to Rovaniemi.

Exercises help participants cope with real life situations

Cyber exercises play a special role in developing Finland's concept for comprehensive security. The careful selection of participants and the unique exercise environment enable organisations to understand how cybersecurity emergencies would affect their own and joint activities. The exercise environment allows participants to consider how the situations could affect society or individual citizens.

"We noticed how professionally this exercise was organised. Rovaniemi is a tourist destination, and we gained experience of dealing with many kinds of threats that would affect, for example, our residents, visitors and tour operators,” says Ihalainen.

National model has provided training for thousands of experts

The first cyber exercise organised in 2025 attracted nearly 150 participants. Since 2021, more than 1,800 first-time participants have attended exercises that follow the national model. Finland has organised national exercises since 2013.

The organisers invite both first-time and experienced cybersecurity experts to the national exercises, including those who re-join the exercise in a different role.

“It is important to involve new participants, as organisations can then comprehensively increase their skills and their knowledge of the cooperation. This time, the exercise for municipalities and critical infrastructure operators had a particularly large group of first-time participants," says National Cyber Security Director Rauli Paananen. 

"It is an objective of the national cyber exercises to have at least 2,000 first-time participants between 2021 and 2025. The exercises also have more experienced participants who can support those attending for the first time," says Director Tero Kokkonen from the IT Institute.

The national cyber exercises are organised by JYVSECTEC (Jyväskylä Security Technology), a research, development and training centre at Jamk IT Institute, in cooperation with the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The Security Committee contributes to the implementation of the exercises in a guiding role.

Inquiries:

Rauli Paananen, National Cyber Security Director, [email protected], tel. +358 295 342 212
Tero Kokkonen, Director, IT Institute, Jamk University of Applied Sciences, [email protected], tel. +358 50 4385 317