What is it like to simultaneously fight a cyber war and a shooting war? How does Russia fight in the cyber domain, and how was Ukraine so resilient? What lessons can the United States and allies learn from that resilience? Next Peak's Greg Rattray joins CSIS host, Emily Harding, to speak on lessons learned from the Cyber Defense Assistance Collaborative.
On January 25th, 2024, a major Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack temporarily disabled the digital infrastructure of Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s largest state-owned energy company. On the same day, an attack took other major companies offline—including the national postal service provider Ukrposhta, transport safety agency DSBT, and Ukrainian state railway Ukrazaliznytsia. Nevertheless, Ukrainian companies were able to restore access to their digital infrastructure rapidly, reaching full access within a few days.
We interviewed Ian Pelekis and Seungmin (Helen) Lee from Next Peak, part of the Cyber Defense Assistance Collaborative (CDAC). CDAC is a group of leading cybersecurity companies, former U.S. government officials, and top U.S. cyber defense leaders who came together to provide operational cyber defense assistance to Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion. Currently, CDAC works in collaboration with participating private sector cybersecurity organizations to meet cyber defense aid requests from Ukrainian government ministries and state-owned organizations.
| By Gregory Rattray and Seungmin (Helen) Lee | In an era of international instability, the safety and resiliency of our digital existence faces deep challenges. Such instability has undermined the ability of governments to counter aggression in cyberspace. In this growing vacuum, the conduct of cyber defense assistance by the private sector will both change and grow in increasing importance.
| Written By Gregory Rattray, Geoff Brown, and Robert Taj Moore | Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a watershed moment. Governments, citizens, and companies faced a choice—they could support Ukraine in its fight to defend its independence or they could sit back while Russia destroyed the post-war order that has stood since 1945. On an unprecedented scale, a major nation-state had engaged in coordinated, convergent digital and physical attacks in an effort to conquer a neighboring country.
They call themselves the Cyber Defense Assistance Collaboration (CDAC), and it is the brainchild of Greg Rattray, a former chief information security officer at JP Morgan Chase. For months, he has been helping build a kind of public-private partnership to combat destructive cyberattacks. This is the first time he’s speaking in depth about the initiative publicly.