Highlights of international and Ukrainian cybersecurity news in July 2024

The key event in July was a cyber incident around the CrowdStrike product. Due to insufficient testing of the latest product update, a supply chain incident occurred that affected more than half of the Fortune 500 companies. Problems arose in hospitals, flights were cancelled around the world - in total, the incident affected 8.5 million Windows devices. The response of the affected companies and countries is already aimed at compensating for losses. The likely long-term consequence of the incident will be clearer wording of liability clauses in contracts with cybersecurity cloud organisations and increased regulation of cloud services by governments.

The UK supports the European trend of toughening cyber requirements for the public and private sectors. The country is gearing up to adopt a law on cybersecurity and resilience that will focus on protecting critical infrastructure, increasing the powers of regulators, strengthening reporting, and introducing fines and penalties for organisations that do not comply with established cybersecurity standards.

Ukraine continues to strengthen international cooperation in the field of cybersecurity, integrating into Western institutions and sharing its experience in countering russian aggression in cyberspace. During the third round of the EU-Ukraine Cyber Dialogue, an agreement was reached to deepen cooperation. The Ukrainian delegation shared its experience in countering russian cyber aggression and provided recommendations to partners on how to strengthen national cybersecurity during a meeting with the ambassadors of the European Union to the Political and Security Committee in Brussels. Experts of the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine shared their experience in countering cyber threats at the USA-Ukraine Cyber Bridge and the Hack the Capitol conference in the United States.

To enhance the cyber resilience of the regions, the NCCC organised the first Regional Cyber Resilience Forum in Lviv, which brought together about 400 participants. The Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Office for Entrepreneurship and Export Development, with support from USAID, launched a cyber diagnostics programme for small and medium-sized businesses. For the third time, the NCCC, the Ministry of Veterans and CRDF Global trained veterans under the Cyber Defenders reintegration programme, providing them with knowledge and skills in cyber defence and cyber security for employment in the public and private sectors.

The first world cyber war is actively expanding the area of participants involved and is turning into a global, almost open cyber confrontation, in which the vector of offensive measures of russian hackers remains one of the key ones. The hacking of TeamViewer was attributed to the russian group APT29. russian hackers have intensified attacks on Finnish websites, and the High Society hacker coalition is planning attacks on NATO, Europe, Ukraine and Israel.

At the same time, the Western world is actively countering russian cyber activity. In July, the US shut down a russian AI-based bot farm, imposed restrictions on Kaspersky antivirus, and imposed sanctions on russian hackers from the CARR group.

Read more about legislative changes, initiatives of national actors, trends, forecasts and analytical assessments, international and Ukrainian news in cybersecurity in Ukraine: Digest for July 2024.

Also, you can see a brief summary of international and Ukrainian news for Q2 2024 by following the links:
■ QUARTERLY ANALYTICAL SUMMARY - Q2
■ QUARTERLY ANALYTICAL SUMMARY - Q2