- Cyber ​​warfare is an obvious part of modern warfare.

Ukraine has shown that, says Patrik Ahlgren, head of the cyber defense section of the command staff.

He leads a business on growth.

The Armed Forces is expanding with another IT defense unit that is now being built up in Linköping.

Apart from its own defense exercises in cyberspace, Sweden participates in the exercise Locked Shields, which is organized by CCDCOE, a cyber defense center for NATO and like-minded countries.

"Useful experience"

A total of 24 countries competed for two days to defend themselves against cyber attacks.

Last year, Sweden won.

This year, the military team, where they competed together with Norway and Finland, ended up in fourth place.

This year, Sweden also participated with a civilian team consisting of IT staff from energy companies.

According to team leader Patrik Fältström, such an exercise is important as it exposes the participants to repeated attacks on a broad front, in a way they do not encounter in their everyday lives.

- Normally you defend your own system.

Here you both learn to defend someone else's system, but also work with other individuals under very high stress.

It is a very, very useful experience, he says.

Trained in payment systems

How representative is the exercise of what it would be like in reality?

- I think it is very representative of a targeted attack where you try to break down a societal function and use the IT system as a tool for that.

This year, CCDCOE invested in training the ability to protect society's payment systems.

- Some countries also include the financial sector as critical infrastructure, in addition to energy and telecom.

Our goal was to show how interrupted cash flows affect a country's ability to defend itself, says Carry Kangur, project manager for Locked Shields.

Ukraine is fighting "rock hard"

Ukraine has for several years been subjected to hacker attacks aimed at the country's electricity supply and business.

Their resilience has gradually improved and today Patrik Ahlgren believes that they manage to defend themselves well against the attacks.

- They are fighting hard to maintain the internet and for energy supply and telecommunications to be up in the crucial areas.

Exactly what the exercise was about.