This Swiss wants to better protect humanitarian organizations against hackers

The cyber attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about a year ago has left its mark. Given the increasing danger of such attacks, there is one in Geneva on Monday new humanitarian cybersecurity platform opened been.

“The need is obvious,” says Stéphane Duguin, head of the CyberPeace Institute founded in 2019 and driving force behind the new platform, in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency.

The institute’s services include evaluating protection measures and training employees before and after a cyber attack.

Attack on the ICRC

Since its establishment about three years ago, the non-governmental organization has supported about 100 other NGOs and companies. With the new initiative, she wants to increase this number tenfold by 2025.

There’s a lot of work to be done — threat detection and response, prevention, as well as partnerships and political advocacy on the international scene, Duguin said. According to the director, the attack on the ICRC was “a great wake-up call” for those who were not convinced of the importance of protecting humanitarian organizations.

If an actor is targeted, it can have direct consequences for vulnerable groups of people around the world. “In disasters such as the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, for example, it is clear how important it is not to be a target,” continues Duguin.

“In an ecosystem with insufficient resources for cybersecurity and in the face of accelerating digitization, they become easy prey,” continues Duguin. This is all the more true as humanitarian organizations can be targeted by both criminal groups and states.

The ICRC fell victim to a cyber attack last January. The data of more than 500,000 people was stolen. These contain details of missing persons and their families, detainees and other persons assisted by the ICRC during armed conflict, natural disasters or migration. It was suspected that a state or state-backed group was behind the attack.

(dsc/sda)