Over the past week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other US government agencies have issued warnings to domestic businesses to prepare for potential increases in cyber attacks following the military actions of Russia against Ukraine.
Russia already unleashed Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks against Ukrainian government agencies to disable them, and it remains plausible that we could see potentially similar attacks here against the U.S. government, businesses, and infrastructure as a result of our sanctions against Russia.
Please note – US officials continue to say there are “no specific, credible” threats to the US homeland tied to tensions with Russia over Ukraine, but they are preaching vigilance.
We are taking this opportunity to encourage you to communicate with your staff and urge them to use added caution when it comes to managing the data and network of the business and their personal lives. Additionally, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency advises organizations and people to “shield up.”
In addition to preaching added caution to your teams, organizations should ensure all software is up-to-date and test backup copies & procedures. Now is the time to review your business continuity and cyber incident response plans. DHS officials said U.S. organizations should be ready to defend their critical assets, urging every business and government agency to act now.
For additional guidance, check out the following resources:
Escalating Situation in Ukraine and Impact to Financial Sector
Cyber Watch: Ukrainian/Russian Geopolitical Conflict
If you suspect you may be involved in a cyber incident, whether a potential breach or you identified degradation in your network functionality (a sign of a potential DDOS attack), please contact your JKJ team immediately to discuss next steps. We are on standby and here to help.
