Volodymyr Karastelov, head of the SBU Cybersecurity Department, said that the Service has deployed a network of regional cybersecurity centers throughout Ukraine. They were created to proactively protect critical infrastructure, primarily energy, transport, defense enterprises, and government agencies.
Volodymyr Karastelov, head of the SBU Cybersecurity Department, said that the Service has deployed a network of regional cybersecurity centers throughout Ukraine. They were created to proactively protect critical infrastructure, primarily energy, transport, defense enterprises, and government agencies.
According to the SBU, the new centers are tasked with finding weaknesses in local defense systems in advance, preventing incidents, and neutralizing cyberattacks on critical infrastructure facilities. Karastelov explained that the emphasis is on preventive work: teams are located near important facilities to quickly detect and stop cyber threats. He announced the creation of the network during a speech at the Kyiv International Cyber Resilience Forum.
Separately, Karastelov emphasized that strengthening the digital capabilities of the SBU has been identified as a priority by the Service’s leadership, and also provided statistics on work since the beginning of the full-scale invasion: specialists have neutralized more than 14 thousand large-scale cyberattacks and critical cyber incidents. According to him, most of the interventions were aimed at the resources of central government bodies and strategically important enterprises in the energy, transport, and defense industries.
Another example that Karastelov gave concerns the countermeasures against the Pterodo virus. The SBU claims that it has been studying this tool for several months, found a vulnerability and created software that prevents Russian hackers from receiving stolen data from infected devices. According to the SBU, approximately 18,000 devices have been infected with this virus in recent years, and the new approach allows not to «clean» each of them separately, but to encrypt information at the stage of transmission to attackers. The SBU also noted that to strengthen cyber resilience, the Service constantly cooperates with state bodies, critical infrastructure operators, the expert community and international partners.
The SBU report also states that the creation of cyber centers in the regions should strengthen the «field» component of cyber defense, combining prevention (search for vulnerabilities) and response to incidents at facilities on which the operation of state systems and critical industries depends.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how the DVL group of companies, together with the cloud services provider Akamai, launched a special program for cyber protection of web resources, designed for small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine.
