A cybersecurity conference in Dublin today (10 March) will hear that there has been a 25pc spike in cyberattacks across the world in the past two weeks, especially in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Zero Day Con, organised by Irish security company Smarttech247 at Dublin’s Convention Centre, will see leading voices in the cybersecurity space come together to discuss new approaches to safeguard businesses from the growing incidence of cyberattacks.

This includes the chief information officer of the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Laukik Suthar, detective chief superintendent of An Garda Síochána Pat Lordan, CEO of Smarttech247 Ronan Murphy, as well experts from tech companies such as Microsoft and IBM.

Ukraine bears the brunt

Raluca Saceanu, chief operating officer of Smarttech247, said that the company has responded to the rise in cyberattacks by deploying additional threat hunters and created new rules in their security operation centres to bolster their defences.

“The surge in activity has been detected around the world but Ukraine is seeing a particularly serious wave of cyber threats, especially increased phishing attacks, where hackers use sophisticated methods to convince people to click on a link,” he said.

Saceanu warned that businesses and industries need to be “extremely vigilant right now” and that there is “no room for complacency” when it comes to monitoring and tackling the problem.

Ukraine has been hit by a wave of cyberattacks this year, intensifying in the days leading up to the Russian invasion late last month. In January, a massive cyberattack hit government websites with the message “Be afraid and prepare for the worst” displayed on some screens.

Even after the invasion commenced, Russian hackers launched a barrage of attacks on Ukrainian computers through elaborate phishing schemes and targeted distributed denial-of-service, or DDOS, attacks with a new malware.

Earlier this month, it was also found that Belarus was funding cyberattacks to disrupt refugees fleeing Ukraine by launching cyberattacks against EU officials trying to help them.

Cybersecurity up in the agenda

With the theme ‘supercharge your security’, this year’s Zero Day Con will discuss new approaches and technologies in the cybersecurity space in the context of growing global geopolitical tension and how businesses can respond.

Smarttech247 said that businesses need to stay ahead of the rapidly evolving threat landscape by increasing they cyber defences – particularly in their patching efforts, security awareness and general organisation vigilance.

Saceanu thinks that it is important to bring the Government, private sector and international partners in events such as this to discuss pressing cybersecurity issues affecting everyone, adding that recent events have “pushed cybersecurity further up the agenda”.

“Here in Ireland we’ve even seen our health service disrupted by a devastating cyberattack so we know we have a lot to learn,” he added, referring to the HSE cyberattack last summer.

Earlier this week, a group of cybercriminals leaked almost 190GB of data from Samsung in the latest major cyberattack. The same group, allegedly called Lapsus$, had stolen significant data from Nvidia last week.

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