Support to Cybersecurity in Ukraine

Ukraine

Challenge

In recent years, Ukraine’s critical infrastructures in energy and banking sector as well as the electoral process have been increasingly targeted by cyber-attacks, which inflicted both physical, financial and reputational damage. A major cyberattack “Petya” hit several state companies, critical infrastructures and many banks, and quickly propagated to the rest of the country and to other countries. Cybersecurity of the elections has also been compromised during the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in 2014. As part of the EU efforts to enhance Ukraine’s cybersecurity and cyber-resilience of its critical infrastructures, a project to support to the improvement of Ukrainian legislation, policies and practices, including cybersecurity of elections, has been launched.

Solution

NRD Cyber Security has performed an assessment of Ukrainian legal framework in cybersecurity in terms of its approximation with the EU NIS Directive, identified areas and actions that were missing or insufficient to properly address critical information infrastructure protection assessed Ukrainian cyber-incident and cyber-crisis management mechanisms and provided recommendations to strengthen cyber-incident management capacities at strategic, operational and tactical level. Special focus was given to the cybersecurity of upcoming Presidential and Parliamentary elections – analysis of cyber-threats, development of cyber-risk scenarios, assessment of cyber-incident management plans and provision of recommendations to improve the cybersecurity of elections.

In addition, our security governance expert has been invited to join a discussion on enhancing cybersecurity during the upcoming elections in Ukraine. The event brought together a selected group of field experts as well as the Central Election Commission in Ukraine (CEC). The participants have reviewed the recent developments in cybersecurity during the elections and shared real-case experiences to identify how it could be applied in Ukraine to strengthen cyber security capabilities during the upcoming elections.