UK officials have expressed concerns that the UK could see heightened Russian cyber-activity and while there have been no identified Ukraine-related Russian attacks on the UK since the start of the crisis, cyber-specialists have been holding meetings with companies to discuss possible threats and how best to deal with them.
Now that we have entered into a ‘shooting’ war and with the West promising to hit Russia with a range of sanctions, retaliation in the form of cyber-attacks could become more likely – especially if those sanctions have a material effect on the Russian economy.
Officials are talking about a heightened level of risk having warned that a Russian cyber-attack on Ukrainian targets could end up having much wider consequences.
The threat posed to the UK could be significant with organisations responsible for Britain’s critical national infrastructure, such as communications, energy, food, health and transport in the front line of any such attack.
Before the invasion the Ukraine had seen numerous Russian cyber-attacks and the NCSC, Britain’s cybersecurity agency, suggested that Russia’s GRU military intelligence has been behind many of them.
Recently the UK, US and Europe had stepped up their support of Ukraine in combating these attacks, but in the light of the actions of the past 24 hours those efforts would now seem to be redundant.
Who could have envisaged a war of this type in Europe in the C21?
