In history, it has happened before in times of war that documents and other data were transferred to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Ukraine is currently considering such a scenario.
At a time when digital sovereignty is on everyone’s lips, learning that Ukraine is ready to relocate its most sensitive data is puzzling. Nevertheless, Kiev fears that targeted attacks by the Russian army could jeopardize the security of this precious information, which is why the most important of them could be transferred abroad. Ukraine would give preference to a migration to European infrastructures.
Reuters was able to talk about this with Victor Zhora, deputy director of the Ukrainian State Service for Communications and Information Protection, an agency that works directly with President Volodymyr Zelensky. He ensures in this respect that his teams “prepare the ground“in the face of the possibility of a transfer of government data.”There are many options […] All proposals are welcome and worthy of interest“, he added, noting that several countries have already expressed their readiness to host Ukrainian data.
Technically, several possibilities are available to the government: a physical move of the servers or a virtual migration. Nothing would have been decided yet. We simply know that certain sensitive data stored in the capital, Kiev, under the threat of being taken by the Russian army, has already been moved to the west of the country, without further details. Our colleagues from Echoes add that the Ukrainian deputies should agree to a transfer of data abroad and that “the decision would probably be made on a case-by-case basis, depending on the criticality of the information“.