Cyberattacks now come in waves - Cert.lv

RIGA - Since 2022, the level of cyber threats in Latvia is considered to be high, but the cyberattacks now tend to come in waves, Varis Teivans, the deputy head of the information technology security incident prevention institution Cert.lv, said in an interview with TV3 channel Friday.

The Cert.lv representative noted that since 2022 the level of threats to Latvia's cybersecurity is considered to be high and it remained high also last year, but despite the many challenges, the situation became more stable.  

Both the private and public sectors have adapted and are able to counter these challenges properly, Teivans said. 

"Although the attacks have become even more sophisticated than they used to be at the beginning of Russia's aggression, we as a country have tackled them quite respectably," the Cert.lv representative said, adding that people probably have not even felt the impact of these  cyberattacks.

The current temperature in the cyberspace remains hot but under control, Teivans noted. 

He also said that the cyberattacks are now assuming a wavelike character - seeing that Latvia is able to repel their attacks, the cyber criminals, particularly those backed by foreign countries, launch their attacks periodically in response to particular events, as their resources are not inexhaustible.

Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland are the most frequent targets of cyberattacks, especially of those launched from Russia, Teivans said. 

Cert.lv is a unit of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Latvia, whose tasks are to maintain a unified picture of the activities taking place in the electronic information space, to provide support in preventing or coordinating the prevention of information technology security incidents in the IP address areas of Latvia and in the ".lv" domain name zone.