Panel Praises Ukraine's Digital Resilience, Urges Long-Term Reconstruction Help

platforms and communicating with its citizens have been extraordinary, said Mark Bowman, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development vice president-policy and partnerships. The country has been proactive in developing its digital sector, such as by investing time and resources in the creation of an app that allows refugees to go to European countries with digital documents, said CEPS Research Fellow Tinatin Akhvlediani. The government made many legislative changes during the conflict to digitize key government services, she said. Microsoft contributed to Ukrainian resilience by identifying cyberattacks and warning the government, and by helping transfer data to the cloud outside the country, said Nanna-Louise Wildfang-Linde, vice president-European government affairs. It also helped identify and combat misinformation and is working with the International Court of Justice to collect and protect documentation of war crimes in the cloud, she said. Ukraine receives about 20% of all the world's cyberattacks, but it continues to function well, she said. When war broke out, the European Commission had to ensure backup and data storage outside Ukraine and help route and reroute communications traffic, said Pearse O'Donohue, European Commission Future Networks Directorate director. To do that, the EC tweaked roaming and data protection regulations to enable backup and storage of sensitive Ukrainian data and allow more cooperation between mobile operators and service providers. O'Donohue cited anecdotal evidence of people performing battlefield repairs of networks between Ukraine and nearby friendly nations. The EC is also battling disinformation and propaganda, he said. Asked what Ukraine may need in the future, Akhvlediani noted about 40% of the population lacked computers at home before the invasion, and one-third didn't use the internet for anything but social media. Ukraine has a gap in digital infrastructure and computer skills, but about 80% of the population accesses social media, making them vulnerable to disinformation and Russian propaganda, she said. For the nation's long-term needs, policymakers must analyze the region's vulnerabilities, said O'Donohue. Ukraine's physical infrastructure is vulnerable, although there has been relatively little damage to radio access networks except for masts, he noted. And there are also risks to the internet backbone -- such as domain name servers and root server -- for which multiple paths and backups are needed, he said. Another vulnerability arises from the internet being global and open to all, which invites misinformation, he said. Europe has had a massive number of cyberattacks, many highly sophisticated, and government cooperation against them will be part of the future, O'Donohue said: As economies become more digitally sophisticated, they're more vulnerable to cyberattacks, and digital defense will have to become part of policy.