Speaking at the Microsoft Envision held in London UK, Microsoft President Brad Smith said that cyberspace has become a new domain for cyber warfare. He argued that his perspective was cemented as soon as Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, where it not only attacked the nation’s populace from air, land, and water. But also on a digital note, targeting the critical infrastructure like power utilities, nuclear reactors, and essential storage warehouses.
It is a kind of hybrid war where the enemy is not only aiming to occupy the region but to dictate it from thereafter, added Mr. Smith.
During World War II, the UK government thought deeply and moved all its communication systems underground. Brad believes that the decision was taken as per the technology requirements reflecting that time.
He added the same was repeated the history by Ukraine’s government as most of the communication and applications were shifted to the cloud. Thus, paving the way for fail-over in negative scenarios to keep the digital continuity(communication systems) intact.
Smith openly disclosed that Putin started the war long before February 24th this year by launching cyber assaults from September 2021 and trying to disrupt digital services in and around Kyiv via DDoS attacks and website defacement emerging from cyber-kinetic attacks.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence teams were busy mitigating the risks. But they never expected that the virtual war will turn physical by February this year said Mr. Smith.
That’s true as no one expected a war between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy and never imagined it going long and touching the mark of three months (90 days) from the start.
