News
F-Secure, CyberPeace Institute team up to counter attacks against vulnerable communities
November 2021 by F-Secure
Letter of intent signed by the two organizations outlines cooperation in a number of areas as cyber threats against vulnerable communities increase.
Helsinki, Finland – November 26, 2021: Global cyber security provider F-Secure has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with the Switzerland-based CyberPeace Institute, an independent non-governmental organization whose mission is to protect the security, dignity, and equity of people in cyberspace. The letter outlines a broad plan for cooperation in a number of areas, including the forensic analysis of cyber incidents which increasingly affect vulnerable communities.
Particularly telling examples of attacks that harm vulnerable communities are those targeting healthcare providers: they are low-risk, high-reward crimes that have become a significant problem. According to a recent report, healthcare was one of the five sectors most frequently victimized by human-operated ransomware, and accounted for nearly ten percent of Microsoft’s Detection and Response team’s ransomware engagements from July 2020 to June 2021.*
“One of the biggest challenges we have is the lack of accountability in cyberspace, which poses a great risk to not only stability in our digital world but the goal of cyber peace itself. That’s a significant problem, and we need the expertise of our industry partners to help in this understanding” said the CyberPeace Institute’s CEO Stéphane Duguin. “F-Secure’s decades of experience in security is a tremendous asset that we can leverage to help humanitarian organizations targeted by cyberattacks.”
Capabilities that F-Secure can leverage to support the CyberPeace Institute’s work include:
• Intelligence gathering
• Reverse engineering malware
• Forensic analysis of cyber incidents
• Cyber risk assessment of CyperPeace Institute’s beneficiaries’ digital assets
“The potential societal harm of cyber attacks against organizations providing critical services around the world puts people’s lives at risk,” said F-Secure Vice President and head of the company’s Tactical Defense Unit Paolo Palumbo. “Part of our job, as cyber security professionals, is to investigate confirmed and suspected compromises. And we’re happy to use our skills and knowledge in support of vulnerable communities.”
