The evolution of Defender of the Fatherland – From Stalingrad to Cyberspace
Tomorrow in Moscow on May the 9th there is a parade to celebrate Victory Day, the end of the Great Patriotic War, or to the Europeans amongst us VE Day. This is one of a number of holidays related to the military or to the defense of Russia that are celebrated and commemorated due to the huge loss of life the Soviet Union suffered in those days. Not so long ago we celebrated Defender of the Fatherland Day – a nationwide holiday that highlights the contributions to the defense of Russia by the Armed Forces. However, the women of Russia treat it in a much broader way considering it as Men’s Day and no longer limit the celebrations to the military.
Regardless of how the population treat the day, the name remains the same, Defender of the Fatherland Day and this got me thinking about the word “defense”. Traditionally defense of a country involved Soldiers, Tanks, Guns, Ships and Aircraft just like those that will be on show in the huge parade in Red Square for Victory Day, but today it is much broader as the threats we all face today now include those that are on-line. Countries and indeed companies have had their personal or secret information stolen, banking and power systems attacked by criminals of all sorts.
Threat Evolution
20 years ago, these threats did not exist, but with Internet growing exponentially and the entrance of IoT where virtually every device and vehicle we own is connected to the internet in some, these new threats are in many ways even more threatening to us, our lifestyle and countries that those we used to face. Beyond the threats we all know about such as viruses, worms, trojans, keyloggers and spyware, new threats such as the rise of malware, ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (or simply DDoS) attacks have grown over recent years. These attacks have led to the emergence of cyberdefense specialists who help to stop or mitigate the effect of these attacks. In many ways these specialists are even more important to the Defense of the Fatherland than the armed servicemen celebrated on the 23rd of February.
Out of these threats, DDoS attacks, where multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system and effectively cease all business operations are becoming more and more prevalent. They are cheap to organize can use almost any connected device to attack and can come from anywhere. The DDoS attack in the US that brought down numerous popular services and platforms was undertaken using IoT devices connected to the internet. DDoS attacks are not only aimed at the internet almost everyone can become a target of such an attack – a governmental agency, a business of any size, a non-profit organization.
Today DDoS attacks are getting larger and much more powerful and more frequent. Just last year there were several attacks with peaks of over 1 Tbps of traffic! According to Kaspersky Lab, 77% of Russian companies were attacked at least once during previous year. That’s not all – you can find out much more about DDoS and how to protect yourself in our separate longread. Know your enemy, its capabilities and build up your defenses.
Combatting new threats
Talking again about defense, DDoS Attacks can be successfully mitigated. Just recently Orange Business Services released some information on a recent attack that was prevented by our CyberSecurity team where our client SKB Bank was able to withstand an attack that was over 8 hours long without any block to its Internet resources! During the attack the Orange Internet Umbrella security cloud system integrated with the client’s existing security software platforms successfully maintained the clients integrity.
Banks and other financial organizations are among the most prized targets for cybercriminals. In November 2016 several of the biggest Russian banks almost simultaneously suffered powerful DDoS-attacks. Although these attacks did not bring the banks’ operations to a complete halt, they managed to cause temporary malfunctions in some of their services. With DDoS attacks getting even more powerful and refined with each year, it’s crucial to make sure you are well prepared against them and become a Defender as well.
I am not sure however that we will ever see Computer Programmers Marching in Red Square on May the 9th.