Workforce Bulletin

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) has urged a “Shields Up” defense in depth approach, as Russian use of wiper malware in the Ukrainian war escalates. The Russian malware “HermeticWiper” and “Whispergate” are destructive attacks that corrupt the infected computers’ master boot record rendering the device inoperable. The wipers effectuate a denial of service attack designed to render the device’s data permanently unavailable or destroyed. Although the malware to date appears to be manually targeted at selected Ukrainian systems, the risks now escalate of a spillover effect to Europe and the United States particularly as to: (i) targeted cyber attacks including on critical infrastructure and financial organizations; and (ii) use of a rapidly spreading indiscriminate wiper like the devastating “NotPetya” that quickly moves across trusted networks. Indeed, Talos researchers have found functional similarities between the current malware and “NotPetya” which was attributed to the Russian military to target Ukranian organizations in 2017, but then quickly spread around the world reportedly resulting in over $10 billion dollars in damage.[1] The researchers added that the current wiper has included even further components designed to inflict damage.

On November 11, 2020, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) issued eagerly awaited guidance for complying with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for protecting the privacy rights of individuals in their personal data subject to potential transfer from the European Union (EU) to the United States and other countries. The guidance comes in the wake of the uncertainly following the Court of Justice’s July 16, 2020 decision in Schrems II invalidating the EU-US Privacy Shield and upholding the use of standard contractual clauses as a permissible ...