Oleh Derevianko, Chairman and Co-founder at ISSP, delivers a keynote speech at a webinar hosted by the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, the Government of Ontario, Canada.
The event brought together the cybersecurity community all around Canada to learn more about the emergence of global threats.
The global threat environment involves large-scale, organized and well-funded threat actors that target critical infrastructure, all levels of government, and different sectors of the economy, the organizers stressed.
The webinar gathers experts from leading organizations including Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange, Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Queens University, and Cyber Defence Corporation (CYDEF).
In his speech, Oleh focuses on Ukraine’s and ISSP’s experience in countering global cyber threats as well as provides practical recommendations for SMEs, enterprises, and critical infrastructure operators.
‘Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the majority of attacks in Ukraine have similar patterns, they are quite simple but very intense. None of the attacks had a clear indication of commercial purposes. That is why we can assume that the efforts of adversaries were not focused on financial benefits, but on causing maximum damage to the victims', Oleh Derevianko said.
How can organizations protect their digital assets? The basic recommendations should include the following points:
Define cybersecurity priorities
Operationalize threat management: detection & response
Implement cyber awareness and training
In terms of an organization’s resilience, the success of an attack and remediation of incident consequences clearly depends on the level of attention and involvement of C-level management. All organizations should develop detailed Response and Disaster recovery plans and actively engage top people in table-top exercises (TTXs) that simulate different scenarios.
Oleh also pointed out the importance of further collaboration between Ukrainian and Canadian governmental institutions, universities, organizations, and business enterprises in countering constantly evolving cyber threats.