Ukraine prepares to remove data from Russia’s reach

Seizing Ukraine’s computer networks intact would give Moscow not only troves of classified documents but also detailed information about the population under its control. So Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration says it isn’t taking any chances.

“We have plans and we have scenarios,” Victor Zhora, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, said in an interview from Kyiv. “We can move to new locations, we can save data and we can delete data and prevent capturing all this data,” even if Russian forces take control of the government’s offices.

If Russia seizes government passwords during its invasion, Ukrainian agencies’ cyber teams have orders to “quickly cut off access to these compromised accounts,” Zhora said. But Moscow will find “no sensitive data” on government workers’ computers, he contended, because all of it is stored on central systems in Kyiv, and the government has developed plans to disable that infrastructure and transfer backed-up data to fallback positions if necessary.

Ukraine’s cybersecurity contingency planning highlights how the changing nature of warfare in the 21st century has created new risks for governments under siege — but also new opportunities to ensure their survival.

Six months ago, the collapse of Afghanistan’s old pro-American government left behind reams of similarly problematic data, including personnel documents, call logs and biometric information that most likely fell into the Taliban’s hands. Ukrainian officials are determined to avoid repeating that mistake.

“I don’t want to consider this absolutely terrible scenario of attacking Kyiv. Hopefully this will not happen,” Zhora said. “But in any case, I believe that responsible services and agencies … will implement prepared scenarios to move sensitive data, together with equipment, and to install new IT systems [in] new locations.”

Multiple security experts backed up the concerns about Ukraine’s data, pointing to reports that Russia has a list of Ukrainians whom it plans to kill or arrest after invading.

Government data would be a major asset to Russia in carrying…