Cyber attack activity surrounding Ukraine and Russia has increased dramatically since the Russian invasion. Here are our recommendations on how to remain resilient to increased levels of cyber threats.

What has happened?

Cyber attack activity surrounding Ukraine and Russia has increased dramatically since the Russian invasion. These attacks have had international consequences and the malicious cyber activity is likely to have a knock-on result of indirect disruption, impacting businesses across the global community, as we have previously seen with incidents such as the NotPetya attack in 2017.

While the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is not aware of any current or specific threats to UK organisations, adopting an enhanced cybersecurity posture and increased monitoring for threats will help to reduce the impacts to your business.

The NCSC recommends that organisations urgently adopt an enhanced cyber security posture. This should include reviewing and enhancing detection, mitigation, and response measures.

How can you stay secure?

Businesses should assess their preparedness to respond to any cyber security incidents and are highly recommended to review their incident response and business continuity plans. The NCSC has provided Incident Management guidance on their website to assist organisations to produce an incident response plan. The NCSC partner agency in Australia, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), provides businesses with a useful template for a Cyber Incident Response Plan.

The NCSC provides further guidance for businesses on Actions to take when the cyber threat is heightened. These actions serve to increase your cyber security posture and provide resilience in an increased cyber threat environment.  .

We recommend the following 6 security practices are implemented for all business who rely on technology:

1.  Implement multi-factor authentication on all accounts which are important to your business (work email, online-banking, CRM systems etc.)
2.  Ensure employee devices (e.g., laptops, phones), business systems (websites, servers, cloud systems) and software/applications are using the latest version of software. Ideally, utilise automatic updates where possible to remove the need for manual patching intervention.
3. Check backups for critical systems or data are set up properly and can be restored in an appropriate timescale. Remember, large backups which are stored online may will take a long-time to restore over an internet connection..
4.  Educate employees on cyber security threats such as phishing, ransomware etc. And ensure they know what to do when they see something suspicious.
5.  Sign up your organisation to the free NCSC “Early Warning Service” to ensure you are alerted to any vulnerabilities on your website or IP addresses. 
6.  Have a security incident response plan ready. Be prepared for incidents beforehand, to help minimise the duration and impact of incidents. 

For further information please review publications from the NCSC.

Kloudwerk works with you to help you keep the cyber criminals out. We offer affordable cyber security consultancy packages for business customers.  Please visit our Cyber Consultancy page for more information.