The Cybersecurity Risks of an Escalating Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Conflict in Ukraine presents perhaps the most acute cyber risk U.S. and western corporations have ever faced. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently issued a warning of the risk of Russian cyberattacks spilling over onto U.S. networks, which follows previous CISA warnings on the risks posed by Russian cyberattacks for U.S. critical infrastructure. The European Central Bank (ECB) has warned European financial institutions of the risk of retaliatory Russian cyber-attacks in the event of sanctions and related market disruptions.
Cybersecurity is a long-term game
If you are just now evaluating your cyber posture, you are probably too late. Effective cyber defense is a long game requiring sustained strategic investment, not a last-minute bolt on.
If it is too late to improve your cyber defense and conflict appears imminent, what can leaders do? The first rule is that a cyber or IT problem quickly becomes a business problem. The primary step firms should be taking right now is pulling out, dusting off, and exercising business continuity plans.
Second, closely examine your supply chain. Your firm may face the risk of hidden dependence upon Ukrainian-based software engineers, code writers, or hosted services.
Third, connecting with peer networks, vendors, and the government bodies can dramatically improve your odds of identifying and mitigating cyber intrusions. Empower your teams to reach out to cyber and intelligence teams at peer companies, and to government partners who are closely watching the same threats.
Fourth, instill a security mindset in your employees. Enabling multifactor authentication, patching those old vulnerabilities, ensuring passwords are strong, and remembering that phishing is still the number one attack vector.
And last but not least, recognize cyber security as closely connected to overall business security and risk. In face of cyber threats, corporate leadership too often turns to IT for a solution, but IT security and geopolitical risk assessments must go hand in hand.
In a crisis, corporate resilience and business continuity plans become paramount, and these require whole of company attention and solutions. You may find more useful information about using VDR SECUDO for business continuity plan here: https://www.dealdone.pl/post/business-continuity-plan-supported-by-virtual-data-room-secudo?lang=en
Potential cyber attacks - the threat of a DDoS attack
One of the most common cyber attacks is DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service), which blocks the Internet connection, paralyzing company communication, preventing access to servers, applications or websites. A DDoS attack is carried out simultaneously from many devices on the computer systems of Internet service providers. It is unusual due to the fact that it cannot be distinguished from normal traffic by classic security systems. The attack consists in saturating the customer's resources (e.g. Internet connections), so for protection to be effective, it is crucial to recognize and stop the attack at the infrastructure level of the data center operator, which has the ability to accept and neutralize an attack, potentially very dangerous for the end customer.
DDoS attacks have been around for a long time, but their form is becoming more and more advanced. It is one of the most common ways to maliciously disable websites or internet systems. For a company providing services via the Internet, this means financial and image losses. Protection against DDoS attacks has become as important as protecting your IT assets from hackers and computer viruses.
Additional security measures for Virtual Data Room SECUDO
In connection with this situation, Dealdone and partners providing Virtual Data Room software infrastructure SECUDO took the following actions to reduce the risks:
entrusted the colocation of servers supporting the data of the SECUDO VDR system to the most trusted and reputable infrastructure providers;
ensured the appropriate redundancy of production and test environments of the SECUDO VDR system;
ensured additional replication of production data of the SECUDO VDR system in two independent environments;
optimized and tightened procedures of system data and customer data backup in the SECUDO VDR system;
together with partners, it has introduced enhanced monitoring of the security of ICT systems included in the critical infrastructure;
monitors and verifies on an ongoing basis whether there has been a breach of the security of electronic communication;
checks the availability of electronic services on an ongoing basis;
informed staff and partners about the need to be vigilant in relation to abnormal conditions;
checked the communication channels with the entities and partners involved in crisis response relevant to the type of CRP alert level;
together with partners, he verified the backup copies of ICT systems included in the critical infrastructure and key systems for the functioning of the organization;
on an ongoing basis, together with partners, checks the current state of system security and assesses the impact of threats on ICT security on the basis of current information and forecasts of events;
prepared with partners to launch plans to ensure business continuity following a potential attack.
The measures taken are aimed at ensuring the highest security of the Virtual Data Room SECUDO in the event of potential cybersecurity threats and adapting resources to the requirements related to new cybersecurity risks related to the Russian-Ukrainian war.
About us
DealDone is a specialized company that offers high-quality products in the field of information and data security. The DealDone team consists of people with many years of international experience in investment banking, investor relations, technology and cybersecurity. We offer services and software in the field of modern technologies for the circulation of confidential information, classified information, sensitive data and digitization, security, encryption and sharing of data and documents inside and outside the organization.
DealDone independently developed and introduced for sale the Virtual Data Room SECUDO solution. VDR SECUDO is a platform for secure exchange and processing of confidential information offered in the Software-as-a-Service model for business clients, in the form of virtual data rooms.
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