Panelists: Ukraine War Offers Lessons for European Cybersecurity Policy

Russia's invasion of Ukraine may not be a game-changer for digital cybersecurity policy, but it holds lessons for Europe, speakers said at a Wednesday Centre for European Policy Studies webinar on Ukrainian digital resistance. Cybersecurity has become "a weapon in a war," forcing mobile operators to look at the issue in a broader context, said European Telecommunications Network Operators Association Director General Lise Fuhr. The aggression heightened cybersecurity concerns in EU countries, said Lorena Boix-Alonso, European Commission director-digital society, trust and cybersecurity.

Ukraine has a highly developed information tech industry, with 250,000 IT engineers who brought in $6.8 billion in export earnings last year, according to an April report by consultancy StrategEast. The government was already in the process of digitally transforming the state, but when war started, the Ministry of Digital Transformation "shifted into wartime mode," prioritizing projects for the invasion, protecting civilians, evacuating and helping refugees, and keeping the economy alive, the report noted.

Among other things, said Anatoly Motkin, StrategEast Center for a New Economy consultant, the government created a layered system of cyber defense for state IT infrastructure, worked with U.K. archival services on temporary transfers of cloud data storage, and brought in a new format for e-identification. New laws reduced the tax burden on IT industry players, and an IT Nation training program was developed to support 3,000 Ukrainians in switching to IT. Digital programs and portals support the army and civilians, and collect evidence of war crimes.

Ukraine has immediate needs, said Oleksandr Bornyakov, Ukrainian deputy minister-digital transformation. Some are intangible, such as ramping up pressure on the Russian economy. But the country is also suffering from destroyed digital infrastructure, including buildings where it defends against cyber fraud. President Volodymyr Zelensky asked the world for more weapons and the same logic applies on the cyber front, Bornyakov said. Ukraine also needs more access to data on cyber-fraud incidents and the equipment to counter them. Bornyakov urged administrations to increase pressure on the Russian economy, help rebuild Ukraine's digital infrastructure and give the nation more access to data on cyber-incidents.

The report recommended international financial institutions and global development agencies support large-scale education programs to create the 3,000 new IT jobs, global tech companies join sanctions imposed by Western nations, and governments simplify document flows with Ukraine by recognizing Ukrainian digital documents.

The EU isn't only providing cyberdefense but is helping maintain essential connectivity and access to information, said Boix-Alonso. It placed sanctions on media companies RT and Sputnik and acted to boost the broadcasting of Ukrainian content. The work on these and other fronts affected how Europeans view their own preparedness, prompting calls from member countries for a cyber-emergency fund and an urgent increase in the bloc's cyber-infrastructure resiliency, she said.

Telcos began taking swift action in February by, among other things, boosting mobile signals in neighboring countries to Ukraine and offering free SIM cards, said Fuhr (see 2203010042). The StrategEast report offers several lessons for mobile operators, she said: (1) It was a wake-up call to all countries' networks to become more resilient and to face potential military disruption. (2) It increased awareness of the urgency of cybersecurity, especially on the role of state actors in starting cyberattacks. (3) It showed the need to defend the open internet in national forums.

Ukraine's internet infrastructure has remained mostly in place and, where it hasn't, there's appropriate backup to continue carrying Ukrainian communications, said Adam Peake, ICANN civil society engagement senior manager. Ukraine's country-code top-level domain (ccTLD), .ua, has been subjected to large-scale distributed denial of service attacks, but they haven't affected it, he said. ICANN refused a Ukrainian government request to revoke Russia's ccTLD (see 2203070003). Peake defended the decisions, saying ICANN's role is as technical coordinator of internet identifiers and it can't level penalties: "There's no kill switch."