The cables running along the ocean floor carry the overwhelming majority of the world’s cross-border data traffic, and for most of their operational history they have attracted little strategic attention. That is changing. A new sector report from Capacity Insights draws on interviews with senior executives across the subsea industry to examine how demand growth, hyperscaler investment, and geopolitical pressure are converging on infrastructure that governments and operators are only beginning to treat as a security priority.

Submarine cable security moves to the front of the threat agenda

The 2024 incident in the Baltic Sea, in which a Chinese-flagged vessel severed key cables, has become a reference point for the industry. Executives interviewed for the report describe the Baltic as a case study in what they call persistent grey-zone risk, where repeated damage incidents have prompted governments to increase scrutiny of cable routes and landing stations. Maxie Reynolds, founder of Subsea Cloud, notes that the strategic challenge is building frameworks where monitoring, incident response, and attribution can operate without breaking the cross-border commercial model that the industry depends on.

The physical security of cables and the cybersecurity of landing stations are now described in the report as front-line concerns for both operators and government risk assessors. Valentino Giuseppe, VP of product management at Sparkle, points to hybrid conflict scenarios as a driver of new preventative and deterrent measures at the national level.

Repair capacity is a resilience gap

Beyond deliberate interference, the sector averages between 150 and 200 cable faults per year, the majority caused by human activity such as fishing and anchoring. The report identifies repair logistics as a growing vulnerability. There is a shortage of specialized cable ships, spare parts, and experienced personnel, and industry leaders are candid about the timeline for closing that gap.

Carl Grivner, CEO at FLAG, states directly that there are not enough ships and that a short-term resolution is unlikely. Reynolds frames the operational risk in terms that security professionals will recognize: most networks can survive a single cut, but the question is whether customers can survive multiple correlated failures. Ana Nakashidze, CEO at AzerTelecom, is equally direct, saying the market remains segmented with no common platform for cross-border coordination.

Hyperscalers are reshaping ownership and risk dynamics

Cloud providers have moved from being wholesale capacity customers to acting as lead investors and infrastructure architects. The report describes this shift as a source of commercial tension, with hyperscalers now functioning simultaneously as partners, competitors, and, in some cases, direct owners of subsea assets. Their investment priorities, risk appetite, and operational timelines differ from those of traditional network operators, and aligning these interests is described as an ongoing challenge with consequences for long-term sector resilience.

Nakashidze warns that network operators risk seeing their role decrease as hyperscalers drive demand, maintenance, and infrastructure agendas. At the same time, she cautions against overinvestment driven by AI demand forecasts, noting that hype does not justify undisciplined capital allocation.

Sensing technology is extending cable capabilities

One development with direct relevance to security operations is the application of distributed acoustic sensing and AI-enabled fault detection to submarine cables. Giuseppe describes this as a transformation from passive conduit to active monitoring tool. As network utilization increases, these capabilities are moving from experimental to operational.

This shift means cables are no longer evaluated solely as data transport infrastructure. The integration of real-time monitoring and sensing functions into subsea systems adds a layer of operational visibility that operators and governments are beginning to factor into both security planning and incident response.

Coordination remains the central unsolved problem

The report does not identify a single technical solution as sufficient on its own. Across all four executive perspectives, the consistent theme is that resilience depends on coordination: between governments and private operators, across national regulatory frameworks, and among competing commercial interests. The subsea sector is expanding, but the governance structures, repair resources, and cross-border response mechanisms needed to protect that infrastructure are not keeping pace with the investment flowing into it.

Submarine cables have become strategic assets in their own right. Securing them requires the same combination of technical controls, organizational readiness, and cross-border cooperation that cybersecurity professionals apply to other categories of critical infrastructure.



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