Happy new year 2024
Dec 31st, 2023 by Jesper Kråkhede
New Year´s Eve again, and a year since I turned 50 on a call with a municipality that couldn´t afford help. That day set the tone for my whole year of writing: resources, and how the lack of them shapes our security.
Three events stood out for me in 2023. In the spring, a supply chain attack in which a widely used business phone application was itself compromised, and its users got malware through a legitimate update. In early summer, the mass exploitation of a file transfer product, where one criminal group stole data from hundreds of organisations in a single campaign. And in the autumn, a gateway vulnerability that let attackers take over sessions, used by ransomware groups against companies all over the world.
But the story that stays with me most is still Ukraine. In the first days of the war, Ukraine moved critical government data out of the country and into the cloud, in datacenters across Europe. Microsoft´s report on defending Ukraine described how a government datacenter in Kyiv was later hit by Russian missiles. The data was already safe. It is the clearest example I know of resilience planned in time, and of the difference cooperation can make.
So my greetings this year go to everyone who stands up against oppression, in Ukraine and elsewhere. And to everyone who fights hackers every day, often with too few people and too little time.
Happy new year, and greetings from all my dachshunds!