Satya Nadella reveals how cybersecurity defended Ukraine from Russian attacks

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also shared details of a report that the company made on the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Microsoft figured out that Russia was going to attack Ukraine even before the "military operation" was announced because of the "trillions of signals" of Russian activity on critical Ukrainian infrastructure the company noticed because of its cyber capability, CEO Satya Nadella said.

He added that Microsoft was able to work with the Ukrainian government to "evacuate" critical information into their cloud and protect them.

On being asked about how Microsoft deals with cybersecurity, Nadella told the World Economic Forum, "Before we think about protection, you want to make sure by design you're building systems that are secure. So, this is a place where some of the best design work, tooling work, testing work needs to be done, such that any digital system that's being built is secure by design. "

Speaking about governance and privacy, Satya Nadella said, "You can't say we will deal with privacy as an after-effect... So what happened, for example in the Ukrainian case, was we were able to, because of our cyber capability, because of the trillions of signals we see long before, quite frankly, the attack started, the Russian activity on critical Ukrainian infrastructure."

"And we were able to work then with the Ukrainian government to really evacuate them effectively into our cloud and protect them. "

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Sharing details of a report that Microsoft made on the Russian attack on Ukraine, the CEO said, "The key conclusions were that you have multiple cyber actors, sponsored in this case by the state, going after critical infrastructure that can completely compromise the functioning of a government or the broader society. So, the other piece is the weakest link can be exploited to then hit hard at everything else. So that's the other issue with the connected world."

Meanwhile, Ukrainian armed forces said on Monday they had recaptured more than 20 settlements in the past 24 hours amid a large counter-offensive.

"In the past 24 hours, Ukrainian armed forces drove the enemy away from more than 20 settlements" and are regaining "full control over them", the Ukrainian army said in its daily briefing.

"In their retreat, Russian troops are hastily abandoning their positions and fleeing," the army statement added.

Read more: Russian nationalists rage after stunning setback in Ukraine

Throughout the weekend, Ukraine claimed sweeping successes against Russia in the south and the east, including the cities of Izyum, Kupiansk and Balakliya.