As the situation in Eastern Europe escalates further, the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) has warned there will likely be an increase in retaliatory Russian cyber-attacks against other nations.

While no specific cyber threats against Scottish businesses have been identified so far, the SBRC believes organisations across the public, private and third sectors could be at risk.

“We are urging all organisations, regardless of size, to take steps now and improve their cyber security and safeguard critical assets,” said SBRC CEO Jude McCorry.

“Please take this threat seriously and do what you can to make your organisation as secure as possible.”

Escalating threats

Cyber threats against Ukrainian state assets have increased dramatically in recent months as tensions reached boiling point along the Russian border.

So far this year, Ukraine has been hit with three waves of cyber-attacks, with a devastating attack in January blamed on Russian-backed hackers.

As Russian forces surged into Ukraine on Wednesday morning, the state was hit with another wave of attacks. This incident saw several banks and government websites knocked offline as part of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which is designed to overwhelm websites with large volumes of traffic.

With tougher sanctions now being imposed on Russia, there are concerns that Russian-backed hacker groups will look to retaliate and cause widespread global disruption.

Speaking to DIGIT, McCorry said the situation could deteriorate further and advised Scottish organisations to remain in a heightened state of alert.

She said: “Russia is among the countries that have the most resources behind developing and using formidable hacking tools against rival nations.

“On Wednesday, cyber-attacks disrupted the websites of several Ukrainian government agencies, and last week the White House attributed attack on government sites and banks to the Russian Military spy agency, GRU.”

Recommended

• AdTech startup Good-Loop raises £4.5m to accelerate US expansion
• Edinburgh robotics startup raises $4.8m in funding
• Could technology be the key to tackling ‘spoofed calls’?

McCorry warned that a new strain of malware “released from Russia” has also emerged which destroys data on infected devices.

First identified by researchers at Symantec, McCorry said the malware is designed specifically to allow “deeper penetration in computers” and is being aimed at organisations operating across the financial, defence, aviation and tech sectors.

For the SBRC, the concern is that Scottish businesses could be affected by the collateral damage of these attacks being waged against Ukraine and its citizens.

Already, McCorry said there is evidence of phishing emails targeting Ukrainian citizens, some of which “could end up in any country” and affect businesses left unaware.

To counter potential threats, the SBRC has issued crucial advice to help organisations stay secure.

These include:

• Ensure all devices, including personal devices, are kept up-to-date
• Ensure all devices have the latest security updates
• Speak to your IT providers to ensure you have a regular patch management/update policy
• Before you leave the office this weekend send a reminder email to all staff to let them know of the threat – and be vigilant for phishing emails etc. And include websites like NCSC, SBRC and Cyber Scotland so employees can educate themselves and be more vigilant
• If you think you are a victim of a cyber-attack, please call our incident response line on 01786 437472 and Police Scotland on 101