U.S. President Joe Biden has warned of a growing %RussianCyberThreat to American businesses.
The president said intelligence reports indicate that Russia is “exploring” cyber attack, but the U.S. would use “every tool” available to prevent and respond to such a move.
President Biden said that Moscow is looking to retaliate for sanctions imposed on it after Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia’s foreign ministry has said bilateral ties between Moscow and the U.S. were on the “verge of rupture.”
The American president called on U.S. companies to immediately “accelerate efforts to lock their digital doors.”
“You have the power, the capacity, and the responsibility to strengthen the cybersecurity and resilience of the critical services and technologies on which Americans rely. We need everyone to do their part,” said Biden.
The %CyberSecurity world has been braced for some sort of large scale %Cyberattack from Russia since tensions began building between Russia and Ukraine.
Cyber authorities in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere have been warning not just about attacks on Ukraine but on so-called “spill over,” where other countries are targeted or where a hack accidentally spreads outside of the theatre of conflict.
In a worst-case scenario, a major cyberattack on the U.S. or another NATO member could trigger Article 5, its collective defence clause.
News of the cyberattack warning comes as consumer electronics giant %Apple ($AAPL) reported that several of its services suffered an unexpected outage, including its app store. Those outages have been resolved after several hours delay, the company said.