Presently, provate and public sectors have to operate in an unprecedented difficult time. Cybersecurity requires especially high level of attention. Many leading experts and companies made projections for 2022 cybersecurity that demonstrated the expectation of increased cyber-attacks on financial institutions. However, nobody could foresee the current developments occurred as a result of Russia invading Ukraine.

The above developments significantly effected the economic growth of different countries that was followed by cyberchaos. As cybersecurity experts say the cyber-attacks during the war are acquiring the scale unimaginable up to now.

Based on the information provided by Ukrainian officials, about 400, 000 hackers from various countries volunteered to get engaged in counter-actions against the attacks initiated by Russia. This led to some polarization between countries depending who acted on whose side. For the first time in history, anybody can get involved in the war – a hybrid war either on the land or in cyberspace. At the same time, the number of sectors exposed to cyber-attacks is growing.

Taking the reality into consideration, countries call private and public sectors for special precaution that is well-demonstrated by the urge of G7 participant countries to strengthen cooperation for active prevention of cyber threats.

What should private and public agencies do to decrease the growing number of cyber threats?

It is important to:

use multi-factor authentication to access systems;
install security systems on working devices and gudgets to identify and decrease threats;
update systems regularly;
change passwords frequently and use strong ones; use different passwords for different systems
back up important data and use offline/cold backup as well;
check incidents response scenarios and improve them;
encode the data to make their use impossible in case they are stolen;
frequent check of vulnerable systems using automated tools; eliminate weaknesses immediately or as soon as possible;
inform employees on the wide-spread cyber-attack methods and require to report any suspicious cases;
Require the products developed applying high standards of security from software providers;
Require strict adherence to security standards from service providers.

Presently, cyber-attacks are conducted applying two main methods:

a) access to personal and/or sensitive data to interfere in and hinder current activity;

b) DDOS attacks aimed to back-pedal the service or net activity.

We urge the representatives of all sectors to take into consideration the above advice and implement them actively in order to avoid potential threats or, at least, minimize them.

#BeCyberCareful

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