The Blast Radius of Modern Conflict
War doesn’t stay in one place anymore. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the shockwaves rippled through fiber-optic cables and server racks, not just trenches and bridges. A Ukrainian tax software company, Intellias, found itself at the epicenter of a new kind of battle — one fought with malware, DDoS attacks, and data wipes. Its story is a brutal lesson for any business that thinks geography offers protection.
Intellias, which develops tax and accounting platforms for clients in Europe and North America, didn’t just lose power or internet access. Its infrastructure became a target. Hackers linked to state actors tried to cripple its systems, hoping to disrupt tax collection and sow chaos. The company survived, but barely. Its experience reveals a hard truth: in the age of cyberwarfare, every business with a digital footprint is a potential combatant.
The Attack That Almost Killed a Company
In March 2022, Intellias faced a coordinated assault. Attackers deployed a wiper malware variant called CaddyWiper, designed to erase data from Windows machines. They also hammered the company’s cloud services with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, aiming to knock its platforms offline during peak tax season.
The firm’s IT team scrambled. They had to assume their on-premise servers were compromised. So they pivoted entirely to backups stored in a different cloud region — one in Poland, far from the conflict zone. It wasn’t a smooth transition. Engineers worked 20-hour shifts, sleeping on office floors. Some fled the country with families in tow, coding from hotel rooms in Warsaw or Berlin. The attack cost millions in lost revenue and emergency IT spending.
But here’s the key: they had a plan. Not a generic disaster-recovery document, but a specific wartime playbook that accounted for physical displacement, supply-chain disruption, and targeted cyberattacks. That plan is what saved them.
Why Your Business Needs a Wartime Gameplan
You might think: I’m not in Ukraine. I’m not a tax software firm. Why should I care? Because the attackers don’t discriminate by geography. They target by opportunity. If your company handles sensitive data, processes payments, or runs critical infrastructure, you’re on the map.
Consider this: in 2023, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure rose by 40% globally, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Many of those attacks were tied to geopolitical conflicts — Russia-linked groups hitting energy grids in Europe, Chinese-linked actors probing US telecoms. The battlefield is now everywhere.
A wartime gameplan isn’t just for defense contractors. It’s for any business that wants to survive a prolonged, state-backed assault. Here is what that plan should include:
- Geographic redundancy: Don’t keep all backups in one region. Use multiple cloud providers or data centers in different countries. Intellias survived because its Polish backups were outside the war zone.
- Offline fallbacks: If the internet goes down or your cloud provider is attacked, can you still operate? Have paper-based processes or local servers that can run disconnected.
- Communication blackout protocols: When attackers hit, they often target phones and email first. Set up encrypted satellite phones or radio backups for key staff.
- Supply-chain resilience: Your software vendors, cloud providers, and internet service providers can all be compromised. Vet them for cybersecurity maturity. Have alternatives lined up.
The Human Factor: Staff Under Siege
Plans are useless without people to execute them. And people under duress make mistakes. Intellias saw this firsthand. Some employees, fearing for their families, accidentally clicked phishing links sent by attackers posing as evacuation coordinators. Others leaked credentials under coercion.
Training for wartime conditions is different from standard cybersecurity awareness. It must address psychological pressure. Teach staff to recognize social engineering that exploits fear — fake military orders, false warnings about family safety, bogus relief fund offers. Run drills that simulate not just a technical breach, but a real-world crisis: no power, no internet, no certainty.
Also, consider legal and HR policies. Can employees work from another country if they flee? Do you have payroll systems that function offline? These aren’t IT questions — they’re business continuity questions that need answers before the crisis hits.
Lessons from the Front Lines
Intellias ultimately recovered. But its CEO told reporters that the company came within hours of total collapse. The attack exposed a gap in most corporate defense strategies: they assume the world stays stable. That assumption is now a liability.
For businesses watching from safe distances, the message is clear. Cyberwarfare is not a future threat. It is the present reality. And the only way to survive it is to build a gameplan that treats war — real, kinetic, digital war — as a plausible scenario. Not just a footnote in a risk register, but a core part of your business continuity planning.
Start today. Audit your backups. Diversify your infrastructure. Train your people. Because when the next conflict goes digital, you don’t want to be the company that thought it was safe.
