Communications of the ACM
U.S. Sends Top Security Official to Help NATO Brace for Russian Cyberattacks
The trip by Anne Neuberger, the White House’s top cybersecurity official, is largely focused on how to coordinate a NATO response should Russia attack Ukraine’s power grid or communications systems.
Credit: Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times
The White House dispatched its top cybersecurity official to NATO on Tuesday in what it described as a mission to prepare allies to deter, and perhaps disrupt, Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine, and to brace for the possibility that sanctions on Moscow could lead to a wave of retaliatory cyberattacks on Europe and the United States.
The visit by the official, Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, underscored recent intelligence assessments that an invasion of Ukraine would almost certainly be preceded by renewed cyberattacks on Ukraine's electric grid, its communications systems and its government ministries.
All of those systems have been Russian targets in the past six years. Ukraine has often been President Vladimir V. Putin's testing ground for Russia's arsenal of cyberweapons.
"We have been warning for weeks and months, both publicly and privately, that cyberattacks could be part of a broad-based Russian effort to destabilize and further invade Ukraine," the White House said in a statement announcing Ms. Neuberger's arrival at NATO headquarters in Brussels. After speaking with the North Atlantic Council, NATO's main policy body, she will go on to Poland, where she will meet with Baltic officials responsible for cyberdefense.
From The New York Times
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