Russia’s cyber war: and its effect on Australia

Over the past few weeks, we’ve taken a number of steps to increase our cyber readiness as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There have been warnings from authoritative sources that cyber-attacks may be part of this conflict and, due in part to Australia placing sanctions on Russia, authorities believe Australia may be a target. We don’t believe Vision Super is in any direct danger, but past Russian cyberwarfare has included techniques that can cause general disruption – distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation and propaganda, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, persecution of cyber-dissidents and other active measures.

The most common form of attack is to gain initial access into a network through ‘phishing’ and ‘spear phishing’ emails, which can then allow cyber criminals to move around within the network. Many of the cyberattacks specifically directed at Ukraine in the past month have been relatively basic DDoS attacks, which are more effective for short-term disruption. While organisations in Ukraine continue to be targeted, to date there have been no known exploitations of vulnerabilities in Australia as a result of the war.

The situation is constantly evolving, however, so at Vision Super we continue to regularly assess our ability to identify, mitigate and respond to risks in accordance with known security frameworks.

At the time of writing, Vision Super has not had to navigate any type of attack on our servers or services. We are working with our third-party providers to ensure their data management is safe and secure. This is a process we do regularly, but we have increased our vigilance to ensure your data is always kept safe.

However, there are others out there happy to see this as an opportunity. Whenever there is uncertainty or change in the world there is an increase in scams. If you ever receive an email or SMS from us that doesn’t look right, then give us a call. We will quickly tell you if it’s legitimate. You can reach us on 1300 300 820 between 8:30am and 5pm Monday to Friday.