Google Cyber Buy, DDoS in Russia/Ukraine, Emergency Connectivity Fund Latest

March 9, 2022 – Alphabet’s Google is set to buy cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion, the companies announced in a press release Tuesday.

The deal, which is expected to close later this year after regulatory approvals, will see Mandiant rolled into Google Cloud. Mandiant has more than 600 consultants currently responding to thousands of security breaches each year, the press release said.

In a “Threat Horizons” report in November, the Google said some cloud accounts were compromised for cryptocurrency operations. The report also noted that it was the target of attacks from Russian and North Korean actors.

The proposed deal comes as Washington grapples with the fallout of several high-profile cybersecurity breaches over the past year. The breach of software company SolarWinds triggered a Senate hearing last year; and in November, a House committee report divulged details in November of the breaches at oil transport company Colonial Pipeline, meat producer JBS and insurance group CNA Financial Corp.

Russia and Ukraine are currently the main targets for cyberattacks

With the recent events unfolding in Russia and Ukraine, an Atlas VPN report Wednesday has found that 89 percent of cybersecurity attacks are emerging from those two countries.

According to the report, 70 percent of recent cybercriminals’ cyberattacks were directed at Russia, with some hackers declaring a cyberwar and leaking government employee data. Others are hacking Russia’s state TV channels, and on March 5, “5 billion attacks were inbound to Russia.”

Ukraine has been targeted by the other 19 percent of cyberattacks from threat actors, and according to Atlas VPN, “Just days before the war in Ukraine, Russian hackers brought down the websites of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the two largest banks with [distributed denial of service] attacks,” which flood servers with artificial data traffic, rendering websites inaccessible.

FCC commits $64 million from Emergency Connectivity Fund

The Federal Communications Commission announced Monday a $64-million commitment from the Emergency Connectivity Fund, the 11th funding round from the program that pledges to close the homework gap by providing connectivity and devices to students.

The $7-billion program, which works with schools and libraries, has so-far allocated almost $4.69 billion toward closing the homework gap since the program began in June 2021. This money has helped over 12.5 million students in America be able to connect to the internet and go to school.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said that the goal of the program is to provide “online access to thousands of schools and libraries across the country” because students need to be “connected to reliable and affordable broadband service, no matter where they live.”

The program has already “funded over 10 million connected devices and 5 million connections,” and this new committed funding is focused on schools and libraries, plus “providing connected devices and broadband connections for students in central Maine, Puerto Rico, Alaska, California, and South Carolina.”