c-span's coverage begins at 8:00 eastern with the president speaking at 9:00. watch live on the c-span networks or on c-span now. stream video, live or on-demand, anytime, c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> we welcome katerina sa dova. she is here to talk about the issues of cyber attacks when it comes what is going on in russia and ukraine. host: to move. good morning. what about disinformation? guest: it is a small, agile

think tank. we look at emerging threats and the impacts of emerging threats on national security and international security. i work on the cyber ai project, we look at the intersection of how cyber operations and cyber defenses, and information operation such as disinformation contains may be impacted by emerging technology such as artificial intelligence. that is the area of my focus. host: i imagine in the study that you do, there are things you are seeing play out in real time when it comes to those issues in russia and ukraine. what do you see about these types of avenues besides military warfare? guest: it has not been as large as we anticipated, leading up to the open invasion, other

different scenarios were considered out of one of the scenarios we thought might be prominent would be the cyber dimensions of this conflict. there may be cyber attacks on ukrainian infrastructure to compel them into making concessions. actually, with the full invasion now, we have seen disruptive denial of service attacks on ukrainian government websites. on the banking websites, but those attacks are usually fairly temporary because when the site goes down, it is easy to bring it back up. we see russia deploy some malicious software on ukrainian systems. that was discovered and all of that was happening in the lead up to the invasion. right now, we are not seeing as much of the cyber activity since the open war is upon us.

host: would you say that the disinformation portion is the bigger piece to watch? guest: it has been interesting on how russia has used disinformation. all of it was focused on the russian public. as we have heard, president putin's idea that neo-nazis are running ukrainian government where there was a democratically elected jewish president is so absurd. the information has been used to justify the actions that he has taken upon. as far as directing that to the american public and the european public, it has not been as impactful. host: as far as the cyber portion or the misinformation portion could extend beyond the borders of russia and ukraine,

is the united states a retaliation measure for this? guest: we have had concern about cyber attacks on the u.s. critical infrastructure. one of the ways in which actors like this can use cyber attacks is as an influence operation. they could use a cyber attack on critical infrastructure to cause enough inconvenience for the united states public to raise public concern about not having access to gas or high gas prices. spin up and amplify that concern in order to try and influence the decision-making of our administration and leadership. that is one of the things i am concerned about. guest: if you want to ask her questions about the topic of cyber attacks or disinformation, he can call us and ask her about it.

202-7801 -- you can text us and call. there was a story at the hill, an organization known as the infrastructure security agency issued a warning on if websites -- on its website. there is no credible cyber threats to the u.s. home,, others can infrastructure organizations -- there is no credible threats to the united states. every organizational art and small must be prepared to respond to disruptive -- a large and small must be prepared to respond to disruptive cyber activity. guest: it is within the department of homeland security which is focusing on shoring up

the cyber defenses of the nation. their work a lot with the private sector. because our critical infrastructure is run by the they work with the private sector in order to share information and best practices. and really ensure that our cyber defenses and shields are up. so then to the warning it issued when it said it could extend this, and they want organizations, particularly in the federal government, to protect itself, at what stage is the federal government able to do that? guest: a federal government has control over its own networks is quite vigilant and is able to do that. obviously, sophisticated actors, such as russia, can, on occasion, penetrate our defenses. we have had examples of that recently. but at this moment, all of the information security and cyber security community, both in the government and private sector there, it is all hands on deck.

that has been the case for the last couple of months. we have preparing for this moment. so i think, if anything, we need to be vigilant, but we should not worry. host: guest: we are in good hands.

the main important point is that the private sector needs to be super vigilant itself because obviously the u.s. government does not run their networks. host: when it comes to the disinformation you talked about earlier because a lot of it is done on social media, what do you think the responsibility is today for social media companies in dealing with how this information is transmitted? guest: they have a lot of responsibility but they only control the peace that they see on their particular social media network. these days, they go across many platforms. they may hatch on a small platform that does not have as many trust and safety teams to monitor what is happening on their platform. or does not have the will to do so. they may have some of these small platforms and jump onto the mainstream platforms. once they jump onto the mainstream, large well-funded platforms, teens usually find these and they try to neutralize

them. they have the means to do that. yes of course it's their responsibility and it is in their interest to make sure that there platforms are not used for information warfare. host: beef seen congress go after social media companies when it comes to large topics of disinformation. do you think that is going to be -- in light of this instance in russia or do you think it will be status quo as far as what the federal government for buyers from social media companies? guest: it depends on what we see over social media. russia uses broadcast media quite a bit. yes, we are concerned with what they do over social media, but they are using their own broadcast media that gets rebroadcast on occasion. while the focus has been a lot

on social media platforms, we have to be mindful that there are many avenues in which this information can take. let's hear from joy -- host: let's hear from joy in rhode island. guest: -- caller: i have -- to watch over my computer. it is from russia. i have had it for years. it is great. because of this, i am getting worried and i want to switch to norton because it is american. that is the only reason for my call. host: to follow-up, a viewer on twitter asked the same type of question. what sites, regarding the average computer user, you might offer to protect ourselves online? guest: i will say that if you

are running a windows system, mac os for example, they do have a lot of built-in protections. an of the most important things you can do is update your computer to the latest version, ensure that it is patched with all of the latest patches. make sure you use multifactor authentication and very your passwords so you're not reusing a password for every site you go to. finally, be mindful on the links you click. both in your emails and online. really be mindful where an email might be coming from, who may have sent it. that is really 90% of how bad actors may get into your system. host: dennis in las vegas. good morning. caller: good morning. i am over 70 years old.

i am in collective bargaining, i still work. but i trade now. what i do is get social security directly deposited. everything gets ach to marry bank. i am reading i emails, seeing all my payments, i'm concerned. my direct relationship right now is with government backed securities, which goes directly from your bank's treasury to the government, and then wall street , which is one of those trades. and then my bank. i am thinking , i change my passwords, i am always warned by those three entities. should i take more precautions? especially at my age. guest: yes. i think all of the things i just mentioned. make sure you have multifactor authentication turned on when you log into your bank.

i would say that the financial industry, and in particularly wall street, they are a critical structure and they have been on the frontline of understanding and defending themselves and their customers from pretty sophisticated actors. they actually have some pretty sophisticated defenses. if you do your due diligence, do not click on any links from people you do not know, be mindful of what emails we open and what attachments we save, and the very your passwords and use multi factor authentication, you should be all right. host: i understand you have family in ukraine? guest: i do. host: how are they? guest: my family is in kyiv, in the capital. they have been under quite a bit

of shelling. they are safe, for the time being, but they have been very worried and under a lot of stress, as you can imagine. they are in their 70's, my aunt and uncle. in their lifetime they have never experienced this. host: what has been the communication between you and them? how regular has that been? guest: i have mostly communicated over social media. surprisingly, they actually still have connectivity. i thought that perhaps that would get disrupted and i was very worried about that. i have been in touch with them every few hours over social media. host: as far as the perspective they might offer as far as what we see in new sources, is there anything interesting they point out?

guest: they are in it. they hear sirens every hour. they can't sleep very well because of that. they hear explosions all around them. if you put yourself mentally in that situation you can probably imagine what that may be like. host: as far as their ability to get information, how has that been? guest: that -- information -- is still going. the president of ukraine has gone out of his way to stay in touch with his people. he releases videos every so often. the news channels are still going, some are reporting from bomb shelters and makeshift studios but they are still going. they are spreading information nonstop both ovaries -- both over social media and broadcast media. host: this is from kurt in new

jersey. you are next. go ahead. caller: thanks for speaking today. sorry to hear that your family is -- to this insanity. my question is of artificial intelligence, data collection. i see putin mocking america news media and politicians. i see him defending himself against -- russian collusion. my thing is plausible deniability. has that been incorporated into ai? have we just been misled? how do we find the truth?