Swedish government faces major cybersecurity shortcomings – EURACTIV.com

Major shortcomings were found in the cybersecurity systems of Sweden’s government offices, reported the Swedish Radio Ekot after it sent emails that appear to come from Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist’s real email address twice in a few months.

Ekot already revealed in December that the government offices lacked one of the fundamental protections against scam emails. They demonstrated this by sending emails that looked like they came from the defence minister’s real email address – which can be a way of initiating a major data breach.

Ekot has once again sent fake emails in Hultqvist’s name.

“This is completely unacceptable. The defence ministry needs to clean up its own act here,” Mikael Oscarsson from the opposition Christian Democrat party told Ekot.

According to Ekot’s investigation, the minister’s office does not use the necessary protections that make it more difficult for non-authorised persons to use email addresses that look similar to one of the government offices’ email addresses.

When asked by Ekot, more than half of the members of the Defence Committee said government offices should review their cybersecurity infrastructure following these revelations.

Allan Widman, defence policy spokesman of the Liberal party and one of the Defence Committee members, referred to the deteriorating security situation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The situation has become much worse, and this places even greater demands on us when it comes to the security of our communications,” Widman said.

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