For over 2 years since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we’ve been steadfastly asserting our right to independence, stability, and security. Today, there is not a single Ukrainian city that is not directly involved in this war, and the capital of Ukraine – Kyiv – is at the forefront of the largest cyber war of the 21st century.

The active phase of the largest cyber war of the 21st century.

Throughout 2023, Ukrainian security analysts documented and processed 1105 cyber incidents, reports the State Special Communications Service. This is a 62.5% increase compared to 2022.

Recently, the spokesperson for the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Andriy Yusov, clarified that Russia is investing significant resources into cyber warfare in 2024 to inflict harm on the Ukrainian economy. “The enemy deliberately seeks to engage in cyber warfare because such attacks could potentially cause greater damage to the economy of our state than investing money on the front line… It’s more advantageous for the aggressor,” he noted.

And today, we all feel the intensification of the intensity and number of cyber attacks on the business and critical infrastructure of Ukraine. Kyivstar, Monobank, State Special Communications Service, Ukrainian Railways, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Defense resources – in total, at least 15 major government agencies and private businesses have experienced various types and intensities of cyber attacks in just the first 2 months of this year (information provided according to data from open sources and media through monitoring).

At the forefront of the cyber war with an enemy whose only goal is total destruction.

At the end of January, the “PARKOVYI” data center services were subjected to a massive cyber attack. An operation of such preparation and execution level was carried out against a Ukrainian commercial data center for the first time. The target of the attack was the cloud services of the data center. In the first hours, we localized the threat and restored the operation of the network infrastructure. Then – restoration from backups and enhancement of the entire existing cloud infrastructure. It was a technologically and procedurally challenging step, but it will help us to counter possible attacks of a similar nature in the future.

The equipment of the clients stored locally in the data center and the entire engineering ecosystem worked without interruption and withstood the cyber attack without any consequences. Based on the reflected cyber attack, it became clear to all of us how much the ISO 27001 certificates in the latest 2022 edition, 27701, 9001, and TIER III helped us to procedurally and technologically mitigate the course and outcome of this attack.

An investigation into the cyber incident is ongoing, conducted by the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine and the Cybersecurity Department of the Security Service of Ukraine, with the involvement of CERT-UA from the State Special Communications Service. We do not disclose pre-trial investigation information yet. But it can already be reported that the main goal of the attack was the destruction of all data and their backups. But the attackers failed. As a result, we have established that the data was not compromised, and there was no leakage of client information.

What’s next?

In addition to improving the cloud infrastructure and implementing additional solutions to prevent such attacks in the future, we continue to actively supplement and integrate scenarios for working with mandatory two-factor authentication and cyber security training. In addition, we employ behavioral analysis with elements of social engineering and geo-access tracking to detect and timely prevent cyber threats.

“All of this, paired with other protection algorithms, will help the client feel safe, and us – to be confident that we are mitigating the impact of external factors and ensuring the highest level of cyber security,” says Serhii Zabirka, Technical Director of the “PARKOVYI” Data Center.

As an additional incentive on the path to strengthening the cyber security of our clients, we offer personalized “out-of-the-box” cyber security services from leading players in this field – Cisco and Microsoft. The most popular of them are presented in the calculator on our website, where you can select the necessary service and immediately see the preliminary calculation. In addition, when connecting these services, we provide all clients with 1 month of Veeam backup for free.

To further strengthen the cyber resilience of Ukrainian businesses, we aim to maximize the involvement of our experience in repelling cyber attacks of this level to assist our clients, partners, and other players in the data center and cloud services market.

Those who withstand the blow in turbulent times will shape the market’s development in the future.

“The key focus of our company’s activities in 2024 is to support the sustainable functioning and development of critical infrastructure and Ukrainian businesses. In addition to developing and strengthening Ukraine’s cyber resilience, we will collaborate with relevant government structures and share our experience in repelling cyber attacks of this scale. We are interested in informing businesses and government agencies about the tools that have helped and will help effectively counter such operations in the future,” says Volodymyr Pokatilov, Director of the “PARKOVYI” Data Center.

The key indicator of stability and development during crises is unity.

The entire team of the data center expresses gratitude for impeccable work and unwavering support from Cyber Police experts, the National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity of the National Security and Defense Council, the cybersecurity of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, employees of the SBU cybersecurity, State Special Communications Service, Dell, Cisco, Microsoft, CyberLab, Vixen.Uno, and other partners and players in the cloud services market.

“Our entire team is immensely grateful for the support and assistance from all our clients without exception for their resilience and maximum involvement in all processes of overcoming the consequences of the cyber attack. We thank our clients and colleagues who use the services of our private cloud for their cooperation and well-coordinated algorithms for overcoming threats,” emphasizes Alla Kitaeva, Commercial Director of the “PARKOVYI” Data Center.

Learn more about “PARKOVYI” Data Center’s cloud services here.