The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming

by Mark Levin, CAE, CSP

Executive Vice President, Chain Link Fence Manufacturers Institute 2022 Inductee, American Fence Association Hall of Fame

You would have to be of a certain age to understand the meaning of the title of this article. It’s actually the title of a movie from the 1960’s about a Russian submarine that gets stuck on a sandbar off of the New England coast. It was a comedy, but it played off the general EastWest paranoia that was an everyday part of life in America during the height of the Cold War.

I thought of it again when reading the latest news coming from Ukraine, regarding the invasion of Russian forces there.** Of course, this current version of “the Russians are coming” is not a comedy in any way, it is an international tragedy. But it might also be something every company in the fence industry needs to take heed of.

Not that I think the Russians are going to invade the U.S. with tanks and bombs. However, they may very well invade the U.S. with the highest level of cyber terrorism ever seen. When we mention cyber security as a big issue in the fence industry, there can sometimes be a tendency for some of the thousands of smaller, family-run businesses in the industry to feel we are not talking to them. They think the companies that must worry about cyber theft and cyber security are the big companies, the manufacturers, the large, multi-state contractors. That is not the case, at all.

The majority of cyber-attacks are aimed at small and medium-sized companies. In 2020, two thirds of all small businesses reported that they had been attacked by malware. Most of these attacks come through email, and – pay attention, contractors – frequently they are attached to invoices and billings.

We all know that the fence industry has no shortage of “war stories” about identity theft, too. There is virtually no company in our industry that has not already been affected by a breach in some level of its cyber security. The concern now is not what has happened in the past few years, it is what does the future hold.

Here is where the war in Ukraine and the state of the fence industry cross paths. Russian cyber criminals, and the Russian government, have been targeting U.S. companies, government entities, the military, and the general public for years. It is not always about the money, although that is certainly part of it. In a recent article, the New York Post noted, “Russia appears to have officially declared cyberwar on the U.S., taking what’s been described as preliminary steps at crippling its banking system and possibly other major industries.”

What is most alarming is that with the war in Ukraine going so badly for the Russian military, there is no question that the Russian government is going to step up its cyber-attacks here in the U.S. to the next level with even the smallest of companies. Ransomware (where the attacker blocks access to vital company information until a ransom is paid) already costs businesses billions of dollars annually. That does not even consider the cost to fix the problems afterwards and the down time of employees while making the system secure again.

It is time for every company to do a checkup of their cyber security readiness. This means not just the technical side of things, but also the human resource side of things. Mistakes happen; new employees do not know all the company rules on electronic communications; cyber theft can also come from within a company; access to passwords and confidential information must be limited; backup systems must be in place throughout the company; the number of outside vendors who install software must be kept to a minimum.

With all the things we must think about every day just to run a safe, profitable business, it is hard to see any connection between what’s happening in a far-off country like Ukraine and running a fence company. But what is happening in Ukraine is causing a tidal wave of problems across the world, not just political but also economical, technological, and humanitarian.

The Russians, and their flunkies, are not just coming, they are already here. **Full disclosure, my mentioning of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine is not coincidental, it is personal. One hundred years ago, my grandfather was taken from his home in a small town south of Kiev (Kyiv) and forced to serve in the Russian army. Most conscripts had to serve two years, but because he was a Jew, he was told he had to serve seven years.

He eventually deserted and returned to his village to quickly marry his girlfriend, my grandmother, then they escaped by driving a troika (sled) through the night. They were still teenagers. They survived and later made it to America, but not long after they left, the Russians instituted a pogrom and wiped out every Jew in the town, including both of their families.

Following the current war in Ukraine reminds me how little has changed there in over a century. It may seem distance to some, but not to me.

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