Faced with the risk of invasion by a foreign power, there was a time when countries transferred their gold to safety. Things haven’t changed in the 21st century, that gold has just turned into data. the wall street journal reports that Ukraine has started sending sensitive databases to Poland, and is talking with France and Estonia, to put them out of Moscow’s reach.
save backups
During the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, a missile damaged a data center in the country. A warning message reports George Dubinskiy, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation. The need to have safe backup abroad has become obvious.
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According to the Deputy Minister, 150 registers of ministries or government agencies, backup copies, have been moved outside the Ukrainian borders or are under discussion to be moved. The goal is to protect them from both cyberattacks and physical attacks at the same time.
Accessible to civil servants on the cloud, Victor Zhora, Deputy Head of Ukraine’s State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection, explained, ” In the event of an emergency, we must ensure that our IT systems continue to functionr”.
Ukraine entrusts its most sensitive data
At the moment, a dedicated cloud has been created with Poland, tested by officials from both countries. The databases transferred, qualified as “VIP”, are those necessary for the proper functioning of the country such as, for example, tax data. Designing a suitable system to accommodate such large databases, both in size and value, takes weeks.
France, Estonia and others should also contribute. However, this type of transfer does not happen overnight. It requires high-level legal and cybersecurity assurances given the sensitivity of the information collected by the host country.