Cybersecurity Pros Warn of Danger Ahead With Russia, China, and Beyond
A cybersecurity talkfest Thursday evening in Washington, D.C., may have left attendees needing the drinks served at the reception afterwards.
“We're actually entering perhaps one of the most dangerous times that we've had in the cyber domain,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator(Opens in a new window) think tank.
Speaking at an event hosted by Axios(Opens in a new window) and sponsored by Silverado and Google, Alperovitch cited two causes for cybersecurity concern.
One is Russian President Vladimir Putin escalating his country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by annexing parts of that country—including areas in which Russian troops have been surrendering to advancing Ukrainian soldiers.
“In some ways, Putin is metaphorically burning the boats,” Alperovitch said, suggesting this increases the chances of Putin reacting to continued Western help for Ukraine with retaliatory cyberattacks.
The other happened in D.C. on Friday, when President Biden announced sweeping restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductor hardware to Chinese firms.
“We are effectively introducing massive export controls against China,” Alperovitch said. But while he supports isolating China’s technology sector, he warned the move could also incite digital retaliation by China.
His fellow panelist Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security engineering, countered with cautious optimism.
“I think a lot of companies are much better informed,” she said, citing hard lessons learned about ransomware attacks and cryptocurrency heists. “It's much more real for them.”
Adkins emphasized such advances in resilience as cloud services that allow faster restoration of apps and data. “The ability to
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