Ukraine Cybersecurity Message at BlackBerry Security Summit
A surprise livestream from the besieged country, and other speakers, gave a look at ways cybersecurity can affect tangible issues in the physical world.
![Victor Zhora, Ukraine cyber protection leader, speaks from room with bookshelves Victor Zhora, Ukraine cyber protection leader, speaks from room with bookshelves](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/bltdce070ab253b7150/64d21bfde7eee926e3a34d1d/VIctorZhora_Ukraine-JPRUTH.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Victor Zhora, deputy chairman of the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of UkraineJoao-Pierre S. Ruth
Fighting digital aggression on different fronts seemed to be the theme at the recent BlackBerry Security Summit 2022, held at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City. In many ways, the livestream from Ukraine, along with the other speakers at the summit, exemplified how cybersecurity can be an essential to safeguarding people, physical infrastructure, and real-world assets.
Victor Zhora, deputy chairman of the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine, joined the event via video for a remote fireside chat with BlackBerry CEO John Chen. “It’s calm; we have no air sirens,” Zhora said. “As you can understand, we are facing them from day to day. Unfortunately, cyber challenges are not the only one in our everyday life.”
Though he did not refer to himself as a “cyber chief,” Zhora said his role focused on cyber protection similar to the US-based Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “I’m just one of many, many all volunteers, cyber defenders, cyber professionals and experts,” he said, “which defend our country, defend our digital infrastructures.”
He put the cyber threats in the context of geopolitical aggression directed at Ukraine even before the current invasion began. Zhora cited a cyberattack in 2014 on the Central Election Commission of Ukraine during national elections as well as other cyberattacks that followed in 2015 and 2016 with Ukrainian media and government entities as the targets. “That was followed with the most destructive cyberattack in history -- NotPetya,” he said.
The NotPetya ransomware attack in June 2017 that targeted Ukraine struck some of the country’s banking systems and services, as well as disabled the radiation monitoring of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Some estimates put the fiscal damage, which included entities outside of Ukraine such as shipping company Maersk, at more than $10 billion. “After NotPetya, our government put a lot of attention to cybersecurity,” Zhora said. That included the establishment of multiple agencies with different areas of responsibility for security, as well as improve coordination among agencies.
Training professionals and taskforces became important for future cybersecurity preparation, he said. “This became one of the key factors that helps us ensure cyber resilience of our country in these challenging times.”
Zhora said Ukraine has faced daily cyberattacks since the beginning of Russia’s military invasion of the country. “We expected attacks to [our] energy sector, to government entities, to media, to telecom sector, to financial sector, to all critical infrastructures and we were focusing on defending them,” he said.
Cyber incidents escalated fast at the onset of the war, Zhora said, with some highly sophisticated attacks at the end of March and the beginning of April that targeted Ukraine’s media. This has changed in the ensuing months. “Up to the moment, we see no particular strategy from our adversary,” he said. “We see rather opportunistic behavior.” That includes seeking out and exploiting vulnerabilities, but the absence of a coherent attack strategy, Zhora said, has given Ukraine the opportunity to fix such vulnerabilities and counteract. “We don’t even have time even to think about how scary attacks can be,” he said. “We are simply doing our best job to protect our country.”
John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, shortened his original plans to speak to make time for his surprise fireside chat with Victor Zhora. Chen did discuss how BlackBerry became organized into two business units -- cybersecurity and IoT -- but the long-term strategy is for the two to converge. “IoT is picking up quite a bit of steam,” he said. This includes a collaboration announced in 2020 with Amazon Web Services on a cloud-connected, in-vehicle software platform called IVY. The platform is meant to give carmakers a way to access sensor data from vehicles for insights that can be used to offer services to drivers and passengers. BlackBerry is also working on securing an IoT-based world, Chen said. “How does security work and privacy work in IoT?”
Cybersecurity continues to be a topic of national concern among members of US Congress. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), member of the House Appropriations Committee, spoke in a keynote fireside at the summit. He commented on the ongoing threats and responses to cyberattacks that have been at play for some time. “We’re already in the middle of a cyber war,” Gonzales said. “This cyber war first started with the national security space with military and our defense actors.”
He said every company in the country today is an IT company first and then provides other services to their customers. “Cybersecurity and information technology is an area that should unite all of us,” Gonzales said. “At the end of the day, there are no boundaries in cyberspace. You’re all neighbors,” he said. “And at the end of the day, we don’t have enough good actors to combat those bad actors. You have to find partners -- partners you may not normally have a relationship with.”
Collin Buechler, information security, data privacy and compliance officer with ConvergeOne, discussed how companies can protect employees, customers, and recently acquired companies by using cybersecurity technology. ConvergeOne is a managed service provider. Since Buechler joined the company in 2015, ConvergeOne has conducted 17 acquisitions that had to be integrated into the network, he said. “That’s a lot of team members. When I started, we had 500. We now have between 3,000 and 3,500 on any given day.”
Now working with team members across a wider geography on an international stage with additional potential for digital intrusion, Buechler said his company turned to BlackBerry resources to help secure its IT environment.
Col. Jennifer Krolikowski, CIO for U.S. Space Systems Command in the U.S. Space Force, addressed the points of cybersecurity concern and threats the military is paying attention to, with the government of China topping the list. “China has been one of the most aggressive going forward with what they’re trying to do in space,” she said. “Over the last 15 years, launching from maybe 30 satellites in one year, going up to having over 600.”
For the last 50 years or so, Krolikowski said, the United States had been able to use space in a non-congested way. “A lot of our companies are enabled by space,” she said. The influx of satellites from China has made it a trickier environment to navigate, as well as introduce more opportunities for that country to expand its economy and influence the rest of the world. “In 2021, they actually led the world in launches with the satellites they have,” Krolikowski said. “We’re seeing a lot of this going from the government to their private sector.”
There are concerns, she said, about how this growing multitude of satellites might be used. For example, if a satellite were to be equipped with a grappling arm. The stated intent might be to deorbit satellites that no longer work, but there could be other potentially undisclosed uses for such devices in space, Krolikowski said. That may mean the stance of the US in space could have to change. “There’s that notion that we are peaceful in that domain and that we can operate freely in the way that we want to and in the way that we have the last 50 years is really becoming kind of an obsolete sort of mindset,” she said. “It’s very much becoming a contested and congested environment.”
Ismael Valenzuela Espejo, vice president of threat research and intelligence in the cybersecurity business unit of BlackBerry, discussed ways organizations can better gird themselves against digital threats.
“Effective cyber defense is based on continuous threat intelligence and this type of intelligence can actually help you to become cyber resilient,” he said. That means anticipating attacks and adversaries, withstanding attacks, and recovering from them.
“Cyber resilience is key to enabling your business,” Espejo said, however he cautioned that it is not an end step. Rather than a final goal, he described it as a cycle with continuous adaptation. There is also a need for defenders to iterate faster to act and gain the advantage over their potential attackers, he said. “We’re in a constant battle where time is a critical factor.”
James Carpenter, CISO and CTO with the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, shared the hospital’s cybersecurity story. “Great cybersecurity is founded upon great IT,” he said. “You can’t deliver great cybersecurity unless you have a foundation of great IT.”
He spoke about accelerating cybersecurity and getting different IT teams to develop an understanding to grow together. “You’ve got applications support people; you’ve got network people; you’ve got just a variety of disciplines in IT and they need to be working together just like the ecosystem at the hospital works together to give a child their childhood back,” Carpenter said.
Taking a whole-team approach to IT can be a force multiplier, he said, making it more efficient to adopt resources such as two-factor authentication across the board. “It’s very difficult to have great cybersecurity of only 25% of your organization authenticates here,” Carpenter said. “You can’t build a good, resilient strategy.”
James Carpenter, CISO and CTO with the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, shared the hospital’s cybersecurity story. “Great cybersecurity is founded upon great IT,” he said. “You can’t deliver great cybersecurity unless you have a foundation of great IT.”
He spoke about accelerating cybersecurity and getting different IT teams to develop an understanding to grow together. “You’ve got applications support people; you’ve got network people; you’ve got just a variety of disciplines in IT and they need to be working together just like the ecosystem at the hospital works together to give a child their childhood back,” Carpenter said.
Taking a whole-team approach to IT can be a force multiplier, he said, making it more efficient to adopt resources such as two-factor authentication across the board. “It’s very difficult to have great cybersecurity of only 25% of your organization authenticates here,” Carpenter said. “You can’t build a good, resilient strategy.”
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