People around the world are watching in awe and fear as the brave citizens of Ukraine continue to fight back against the well-funded and heavily armed forces of Russia, its larger and dictator-led neighbor. The need for freedom-loving nations to act in Ukraine's defense has led to a full slate of economic sanctions brought against Russia and its senior leaders. The sanctions are justified and necessary, but it is highly likely that the entire world will suffer from debilitating inflation as a result of Vladimir Putin's decision to invade.
Another unfortunate trend that many analysts have predicted--and that is ramping up as expected--is that Russian-backed cybercrime and nation-state run groups are increasing their efforts to harm Western powers through cyber attacks. They seem to be doing this either through direct attacks on government information systems or through attacks against "innocent bystanders"--businesses and other organizations that are not directly involved in the conflict.
The United States government has issued a number of warnings of what it sees as a very likely increase in the already high volume of ransomware and other cyber attacks against Western entities[1]. 2021 saw a more than 50% increase in ransomware attacks[2], well before the Ukraine conflict came into play. Analysts are expecting an even greater increase in 2022 and beyond. This would likely go along with a related increase in other forms of cyber attack such as denial of service (DoS) and "wiper" malware such as the type used against the Ukraine government in the early days of the conflict.[3]
All Western organizations are strongly encouraged to examine their operations for sufficiency of security protections[4]. One leading practice is to utilize an expert third-party firm to perform a security gap assessment, preferably using a well-recognized security standard as the "measuring stick." The best gap assessments are accompanied by a roadmap which, together with the results of the gap assessment, will enable your organization to plan out the necessary projects for closing any gaps and reaching a state of greater preparedness to fend off Russia-backed attacks.
An added measure of assurance that networks and web applications are shored up against future waves of attacks can be gained through obtaining penetration testing against probable targets. A process by which experts in vulnerability detection and exploitation attempt to act as attackers to identify avenues by which malicious individuals could harm your organization.
Webcheck Security provides both of those services at a quality that exceeds expectations. Contact us today for a free quote.
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Sources:
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dhs-warns-russian-cyberattack-us-responds-ukraine-invasion/story?id=82441727 [2] https://purplesec.us/resources/cyber-security-statistics/ransomware/ [3] https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/28/fbi-cisa-ukraine-wiper-malware/
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