Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken, if any, to support Ukraine’s cyberspace and to bolster its cyber defences.

In recent weeks we have seen reports of malicious cyber incidents in Ukraine which bear the hallmarks of similar Russian activity we have observed before, including the NotPetya incident.

HMG assess the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the Ukrainian banking sector on 15 and 16 February 2022 to have involved the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). The decision to publicly attribute this incident underlines the fact that the UK and its allies will not tolerate malicious cyber activity.

This activity is yet another example of Russia's aggressive acts against Ukraine. At times of heightened international tension, all organisations need to be vigilant to the risk of cyber compromises and follow the National Cyber Security Centre best practice guidance.