September 29, 2022
Vira Tkachenko, chief technology officer of Kyiv-based MacPaw, has revealed how her company prepared to operate in Ukraine during the war and how she planned to prioritize afterwards.
The first of these priorities was priority zero, which concerned the physical safety of the company’s employees, and then it was expected that Ukraine would not have Internet access as a result of the war that damaged its infrastructure and mobile towers.
It then prepared for cyber warfare because it was the new form of warfare, as modern warfare had evolved beyond the military. Phishing attacks, unauthorized access to lost or captured equipment, disruption of the hardware supply chain, the effects of sanctions, and the consequences of operating from a war zone, such as suppliers’ reluctance to maintain relationships, were among the risks it predicted.
In addition, an emergency team was established with two representatives from each product or service who could fix problems or knew who to ask and were asked to find a safe place. Furthermore, a code freeze was introduced, whereby only members of the emergency team had the authority to make, approve or assess whether a change was safe and necessary.
MacPaw also used the Signal messaging app as a backup communication channel in case its Slack channel became inoperable and migrated its services to the cloud infrastructure. Most of the tools were already cloud-based, but MacPaw still required on-premises software, which had to be changed. The preparation for war essentially aided MacPaw’s transition to the cloud.
MacPaw also bought some laptops before the war, as well as two satellite internet systems, the Ground Control MCD-4800 BGAN Satellite Terminal and the Cobham Explorer 710 – BGAN Internet Terminal.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheRegister.
