Photo credit: Sunflowers in Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine, by Roma Kaiuk.
If, like us, you’ve struggled to keep away from the 24-hour news this weekend, no doubt your heart will be feeling pretty heavy this morning. Watching the devastation unfold in front of our eyes is a truly difficult watch. But, we have also been served constant reminders of the true spirit and courage of the people of Ukraine – and the massive gang of support the people of Ukraine and Russia have behind them, including the thousands of anti-war protestors in Russia (and around the world), and Elon Musk who launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites over Ukraine to get the country back online.
On the ground we’ve heard the words spoken by true heroes; Ukrainian fighters telling a Russian warship exactly, er, what to do, a Ukrainian company replacing road signs with slightly less welcoming messages, and an incredibly brave Ukrainian woman giving Russian soldiers sunflower seeds to put in their pockets “so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here”. Such powerful sentiments in such dark circumstances.
And in the cloud, there are some pretty exciting things going down too. And it’s all thanks to everyone’s favourite hacker group, Anonymous. They started by taking down Russian television channels and replacing with scenes live from Ukraine, followed by the sweet sounds of traditional Ukrainian music. But they have now taken down more than 300 Russian government, state media and banking websites. Ethical hacking at it’s absolute finest. They’re up to all sorts…and well worth a follow over on Twitter.
Keeping your business safe amongst cyber warfare
The fear is that this is far from over. And as Russia continue to launch missiles and cyber-attacks, it’s a time for everyone to be extra vigilant. We’d be incredibly naive to think Putin would go quickly or quietly. So what does that mean for UK businesses? What can we do to protect our assets in the midst of another global catastrophe?
The word on the street is that the chosen method for attackers is to run malware once a victim has clicked on a link or attachment within an email or text message. It’s one of those things that just seems so obvious – yet we know that thousands are making the mistake and supporting the trillion-dollar cybercrime industry.
Top three things to do today:
1. Don’t open emails and text messages from untrusted senders. And even if it’s from a trusted sender, double-check the actual address rather than the display name. We totally get that this sounds a bit far-fetched, but things are pretty serious out there right now – this is the time for belts and braces. Trust us, this is much easier than picking up the pieces further along the line.
2. Ok, so you’ve opened the email that you probably shouldn’t have done. D’oh! The most important thing you can do now is to not open any links or attachments – and certainly don’t reply to the attacker (however angry you are, or tempting it is!). We also recommend changing your login credentials.
3. Use apps that require you to login? Set up multi-factor authentication against each and every one. It will take about 15 minutes to set up MFA on 10 accounts but we think it’s totally worth it. We bang on about this…a lot…but Microsoft recommend multi-factor authentication as the single most important thing we can all do to reduce the risk of a cyber attack on our identity. Why wouldn’t you? Tell your friends too.
Identity and access management in the cloud is our happy place. Download our free guide to find out how you can secure your business. Prefer to talk? Set up a quick call and you can tell us what you need help with.