The guests of the latest Firmament program included Artur Józefiak (director of security team in Accenture), Adam Haertle (editor-in-chief of Trusted Third Party) and Robert Juszczyk (co-founder of ICsec). The broadcast was moderated by Jarosław Sroka, member of the Management Board of Kulczyk Investments and coordinator of InCredibles program.
Threat of cyber attacks
Prior to Thursday’s Firmament broadcast, we asked our readers on LinkedIn if their concern about cyber attacks on their companies had increased in the wake of the war in Ukraine. As many as 46% said “yes, I am worried about cyber attacks.” But are these fears justified? One might assume so, since countries that express opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are naturally targeted by Russian hackers.
However, this does not mean that the number of cyber attacks has increased after the attack on our eastern neighbors. That is something we are unable to determine. Why? As the Firmament guests explained, reliable statistics on cyber attacks are not kept. So, we don’t know for a fact how many attacks were happening before the war and how many attacks are happening now. However, it’s safer to assume that Russian hackers have gotten active, and we should raise our guard and be more vigilant than before.
Read also Fast or safe – how to grow a startup when hackers are hunting?
“I’ve been attacked.” What’s next?
You should definitely not unplug your equipment from the power supply and try to stop the attack by cutting off the electricity. According to the guests of the broadcast, in this way we can only harm ourselves, because traces of the attack – such as the mileage – are stored in the memory of the computer. By turning off the computer, the trace may not be saved and we lose the possibility of protecting ourselves against a similar attack in the future. You should only shut down your computer if you see that the machine is being remotely encrypted.
– We should be prepared for attacks. And for this to happen, we should first consider what we want to protect, and what let’s say we can lose. Only after conducting such an audit we can take appropriate preventive steps – says Artur Józefiak.
Among the preventive steps, the director of the security team at Accenture recommends creating security procedures. Robert Juszczyk adds that it is worth establishing who in the company is responsible for cyber security and who to contact in case of a cyber attack. The phone number of that person should always be on hand and available to all employees.
Report an attack
However, you may not always be able to protect yourself from a data leak or other attack, even if you have taken all the necessary steps. What should we do if we have fallen victim to hackers?
Adam Haertle, Editor-in-Chief of Trusted Third Party, recommends reporting such incidents to CERT Polska, which was established to respond to incidents that breach security in the network. He also advises to report attacks directly to the prosecutor’s office.
About InCredibles
InCredibles is a four-year mentoring program for startups, initiated by Sebastian Kulczyk. During the first edition of InCredibles, 426 startups entered the competition. From among them, the jury selected five winners: Archdesk, Hotailors, Radionet, Tidio, UserEngage. In the second edition, which took place in 2018, 302 startups from the CEE region entered the competition. From among them, five winners were selected: Czech companies Avocade and Neuron Soundware and three Polish companies: Genomtec, Infermedica and Nuadu.
In 2019, InCredibles has changed its formula and increased its reach. In response to the companies’ suggestions, the organizers put more emphasis on mentoring and networking and instead of a separate competition for startups, the program took the form of support for companies selected in other competitions supported by Sebastian Kulczyk, including European Start-up Challenge, SingularityU Poland Global Impact Challenge. So far, 270 hours of workshops with mentors have been held as part of InCredibles.
In the fourth edition of the InCredibles program, 10 startups became finalists: Handerek Technologies, Molecule.One, Therapify, Skriware, Progresja Space, KPMP, Biotts, NataLab, ICsec and Gamehag.
