When Wars Go Digital: Five Practical Cyber Moves to Protect Your Company Now

The shooting war we’re all seeing on the news is only half the story. The other half is playing out quietly in networks, cloud tenants and OT environments around the world. Iran has a long track record of using cyber operations – including destructive wiper attacks and DDoS – as a lower‑cost way to respond to military pressure, and it relies heavily on proxy and “hacktivist” groups to give itself plausible deniability.

Recent strikes on Iran by the US and Israel (including Operation Epic Fury on 28 February 2026) were accompanied by cyber activity against Iranian systems, and analysts expect a sustained period of cyber escalation as Iran and aligned groups look for ways to respond. US and Israeli government and critical infrastructure will be in the crosshairs, but history tells us that partners and suppliers - including in the UK and Europe - often get caught in the digital crossfire through spill over attacks, opportunistic ransomware and noisy hacktivism.

Why UK and European businesses should care

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has been clear: while there is currently no major increase in direct Iranian targeting of the UK, there is “almost certainly” a heightened risk of indirect impact, especially for organisations with operations, suppliers or technology links into the Middle East or the US. That includes everything from cloud hosting in affected regions, to outsourced IT support, logistics providers, or payment processors that sit in your critical path.

Security researchers have already seen Iran‑linked and pro‑Iran hacktivist groups ramping up activity against Western infrastructure, exploiting routine weaknesses such as poor authentication, unpatched systems and exposed remote access. Add AI‑enabled tooling that lowers the technical bar for attackers, and you get more actors able to move faster and hit harder than in previous flare‑ups.

What the threat looks like in practice

Based on recent advisories and historic behaviour, organisations should assume a mix of:

• Destructive malware and wipers aimed at wiping disks, corrupting data or disrupting operations, especially in energy, utilities and other critical sectors.

• DDoS attacks on public‑facing websites and APIs, often branded as “hacktivist operations” to send a political message or cause embarrassment.

• Credential‑stuffing, account takeovers and phishing campaigns to get initial access into cloud and on‑prem environments.

• Ransomware and data theft by groups aligned with, or opportunistically piggybacking on, the conflict narrative.

• Targeting of industrial control systems (ICS) and OT, especially in infrastructure and manufacturing with links to the region.

The important point: you don’t have to do business with any government involved in the conflict to be affected. If you rely on a provider that does, you may still feel the impact through service outages, data breaches or supply chain disruption.

Five top tips for organisations right now

These tips are deliberately practical. They align with NCSC and CISA‑style “heightened posture” guidance, but in plain English.

• Tighten access and authentication.

• Enforce multi‑factor authentication (MFA) on all remote access, admin accounts and business‑critical SaaS (email, finance, HR, code repos).

• Review and remove dormant accounts, over‑privileged users and legacy remote access (old VPNs, unused RDP exposure).

• Lock down third‑party access, making sure suppliers only have the minimum access they need, for the shortest possible time.

Patch what matters – fast

Prioritise patching internet‑facing services, VPNs, firewalls, email gateways and domain controllers – these are frequent targets for Iranian‑linked groups.

Where patching is not immediately possible, implement compensating controls (tight access lists, extra monitoring, temporary exposure reductions).

Make “emergency change” processes simple so critical security fixes are not stuck in bureaucracy.

Assume an incident and prepare

Refresh and test your incident response plan with realistic scenarios: wiper malware in your data centre, DDoS on your main customer portal, or compromise of a key SaaS tool.

Confirm who you would call (legal, PR, insurers, external IR partners) and how you would operate if email, VPN or phones were unavailable.

Run at least a tabletop exercise with IT, security, operations and senior leadership to clarify decisions and escalation thresholds.

Strengthen backups and resilience

Ensure you have tested, offline or immutably stored backups of critical systems and data, including cloud workloads and configuration baselines.

Validate that you can actually restore within business‑acceptable recovery time from a “worst day” scenario (e.g. widespread encryption or wiping).

For customer‑facing services, set up or review DDoS protection and rate‑limiting with your ISP or cloud provider.

Increase monitoring and awareness

Turn up logging and alerting on identity systems, remote access, email and critical business apps, and make sure someone is actually watching those alerts.

Tune detection rules for behaviours we often see around geopolitical events: mass login attempts, new foreign VPN endpoints, suspicious admin activity and unexpected data exfiltration.

Brief staff on a short, clear message: be extra cautious with emails, links and requests for urgent payments or access changes; when in doubt, verify via another channel.

What to do this week

For many organisations the first step is simply to acknowledge that this conflict does change your risk picture and to act accordingly. A sensible one‑week plan might be:

• Day 1–2: Quick risk review of exposure to the region (offices, suppliers, hosting), plus checks on MFA coverage and critical patch status.

• Day 3–4: Focused hardening on remote access, privileged accounts and backups, plus a short staff awareness communication.

• Day 5: Run a 60–90 minute tabletop exercise on “what if an Iran‑linked group hits us next week?” with IT leads and key executives.

If you would like help sense‑checking your posture, building an action plan or running that exercise, I’m always happy to talk.

You can reach me on rachel@rtgcommercialservices.com or drop me a DM.