News Insights: CISA “Shields Up” Campaign

The CISA’s has issued its new “Shields Up” campaign to raise awareness of potential hacking attempts from Russia.

News Insights:

According to Justin Fier, Director of Cyber Intel and Analytics for Darktrace, “Tensions in the Eastern Bloc are heating up — and we must expect that this will spill over into the US. The FBI confirmed that a new strain of ransomware, BlackByte, hit several forms of critical infrastructure in the US. CISA’s “Shields Up” alert highlights several cyber vulnerabilities that nation-state and cyber-criminal actors may leverage. This alert, the most direct of its kind, demonstrates the sense of panic at rising cyber and geopolitical tensions, explicitly referring to Russia as a state sponsor of cyber-threats and warning of “destructive cyber incidents,” like ransomware and wipers previously deployed in Ukraine.

Foreign adversaries no longer have to contemplate deploying nuclear attacks because they can sabotage nations’ most critical assets, effectively debilitating them. As cyber aggressions escalate, organizations across every industry, especially critical infrastructure, need to be vigilant in the face of cyber vulnerabilities, take alerts seriously, and implement patches immediately after release. In a world of digital transformation and automation, CISA’s recommendation that organizations which use ICS and OT test manual controls is alarming given the age and complexity of these manual systems and the pressing geopolitical threat of the current moment.

Like in 2014, when Russia displayed its cyberwar capabilities by crippling the Ukrainian power grid, Russia will likely look to cyber as a proxy for damage and disruption. Russia may look to disrupt critical national infrastructure with a cyber-attack on Ukraine and its allies or cripple the US economy in response to likely future economic sanctions. We no longer have the luxury of extensive vulnerability testing and ignoring warnings; geopolitical tensions are now playing out in cyberspace.”