UN peacekeeping missions, especially in Africa, are at increasing risk of being compromised by sophisticated nation-state-sponsored threat actors and need to adopt best practices and basic cybersecurity infrastructure tools, new research suggests. to defend them.
The consequences of not doing so could be deadly, according to a document from the International Peace Institute.
These peacekeeping missions are collecting significant amounts of sensitive data, including the identities and locations of activists, dissidents and others, making them a desirable target for governments around the world, as well as loosely associated actors, such as the expendables Wagner Group.
At particular risk are United Nations missions in Central Africa, due to increasingly tense geopolitics across the region, according to the brief’s author, Dirk Druet, an adjunct professor at McGill University in Montreal. He warns that potential violations of these UN peacekeeping missions could have deadly consequences.
“As UN missions in Central African Republic, Mali, Libya and elsewhere become increasingly embroiled in geopolitical struggles, it will become increasingly important for the UN to credibly demonstrate independent oversight over the data it collects,” Druet says. “This includes the personal data of human rights defenders, survivors of violence and political activists who may otherwise face imprisonment, persecution and violence.”
Druet advises that The United Nations improves its threat hunting capabilitiesand should pay particular attention to protecting software supply chains and establishing data chains of custody.
“Multinational peacekeeping operations represent a unique cybersecurity environment,” Druet adds. “Domestic trust is inherently limited, while the UN will always struggle to match the capabilities of powerful states seeking to penetrate their networks.”