[1]How IBM X-Force IRIS Prepared for the Ukraine Election:

    You may not have been aware there was a presidential election in
    Ukraine last Sunday, but all eyes in the cybersecurity and
    intelligence communities were keenly focused on this event. In the
    past few years, cyberattacks targeting elections in democratic
    countries, including the U.S., have become increasingly disruptive.
    And in the past few months, international observers have seen
    disinformation campaigns attempting to influence the outcome of the
    Ukraine election.

    Leading up to the election, the IBM X-Force Incident Response and
    Intelligence Services (IRIS) team had been preparing to observe and
    analyze possible attempts of foreign interference in the election.
    Although it appears that a major cyber disaster was averted, we were
    ready for the worst.

    … we recognize that the risk of a major cyberattack on Ukraine could
    be the bleed-over to the rest of the world. IBM Security has many
    clients, including some of the largest financial and logistics
    companies, that need to be resilient in an attack or face potential
    damages in the millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. We
    needed to prepare a response to go at a moment's notice.

    Well in advance of the first round of the Ukraine election in March,
    we decided that we couldn't afford to sit on our heels until an
    attack was launched. We began to operationalize a plan for
    responding to anything that we could conceive of happening before or
    after the election event. I ordered the creation of an incident
    command center team, comprised of top experts across the IBM
    company, that was on alert and could be stood up immediately if
    needed. This team operated outside of the traditional organizational
    structure.

    Now that we have moved from an alert posture back to a normal
    readiness stance, I can share a little bit from behind the scenes
    about how we prepared. I'll also describe what organizations can do
    to evolve their security posture from a reactive stance to a more
    proactive and predictive security posture.

  I don't often post articles about [2]IBM Security (full disclosure: my
  employer) but I like Caleb's write-up about this - especially about the
  C-TOC:

    Plus, for the first time since it's construction, we had at the
    ready the [3]X-Force Command Cyber Tactical Operations Center
    (C-TOC), the industry's first mobile command center, to assist
    clients in Europe with investigations and recovery. We had multiple
    drivers ready to go at a moment's notice and drive through the night
    if necessary. The C-TOC gives us unique capabilities in a
    destructive attack: If a client's systems go down, we have a sterile
    platform from which to work, and we travel with our own internet,
    data center and all the gear we need to accelerate recovery.

  It is pretty cool! Check out the whole article for the breakdown on
  what my colleagues did and some generally good advice around being
  prepared for the worst.
    __________________________________________________________________

  My original entry is here: [4]How IBM X-Force IRIS Prepared for the
  Ukraine Election. It posted Tue, 23 Apr 2019 23:24:48 +0000.
  Filed under: business,

References

  1. https://securityintelligence.com/posts/how-ibm-x-force-iris-prepared-for-the-ukraine-election/
  2. https://securityintelligence.com/
  3. https://www.ibm.com/security/services/managed-security-services/xforce-command-cyber-tactical-operations-center?ce=ISM0484&ct=SWG&cmp=IBMSocial&cm=h&cr=Security&ccy=US
  4. https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=2735