Learning from Ukraine’s unrivaled experience of Russian cyber warfare – Atlantic Council

Learning from Ukraine’s unrivaled experience of Russian cyber warfare  Atlantic Council

No country in the world today knows more about Russian cyber warfare than Ukraine, but further steps are required in… No country in the world today knows more about Russian cyber warfare than Ukraine. The impact of Russia’s invasion offers important lessons for the future of cybersecurity, but further steps are required in order to help Kyiv’s partners make the most of Ukraine’s unrivaled experience. In the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian Security Operations Center analyst Oleksandr often slept at the office. “I’d get two or three hours of sleep while the others worked, then we’d swap. That’s how we kept going,” he recalls.

This was the reality of Ukraine’s cyber defenses in February 2022, amid the largest European invasion since World War II. There were no playbooks available back then. The unprecedented scale of the cyber war unleashed by Russia is best illustrated by a conversation Oleksandr recalls with a French colleague, who asked how many cases the Ukrainian team was handling. When he received the answer of fourteen to twenty, he assumed this was the weekly figure. In fact, it was daily. Over four years later, Ukraine now registers more cyber attacks than ever but suffers far less damage. These trends have been consistent throughout the invasion. Between 2022 and 2024, the number of registered Russian