Maryna Zharikova

Enhancing Risk Analysis for Hybrid Threats: Insights from Ukraine's Experience

The ongoing hybrid attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructures have underscored significant deficiencies in current risk analysis methodologies. Hybrid threats, characterized by their multidimensional nature—combining cyberattacks, disinformation, and physical sabotage—exploit vulnerabilities across societal, digital, and physical domains. These challenges reveal the urgent need to adapt and enhance existing frameworks for risk assessment.

This presentation uses Ukraine’s experience as a case study to highlight the limitations of traditional risk analysis approaches, which often fail to address the dynamic, interconnected, and evolving nature of hybrid threats. By examining specific examples of attacks on Ukraine’s energy, communication, and public service systems, the talk identifies critical gaps, such as the lack of integration of real-time data, inadequate consideration of cascading effects, and insufficient predictive capabilities.

To address these challenges, the presentation outlines pathways for improving risk analysis methodologies. These include leveraging advanced tools like artificial intelligence, integrating dynamic modeling techniques, and fostering the global adaptation of lessons learned from Ukraine. 

By drawing on Ukraine’s resilience and innovative responses, this talk aims to inspire the development of more robust, adaptable, and comprehensive risk analysis methodologies that can be applied across diverse geopolitical contexts.

About the speaker:

Maryna Zharikova is a researcher specializing in risk analysis and hybrid threat modeling. She is a Professor in the Software Tools and Technologies Department at Kherson National Technical University, Ukraine, where she teaches and conducts research online. Simultaneously, she works as a research fellow at the Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany, where her research focuses on developing frameworks for hybrid risk analysis and addressing dynamic, multidimensional threats to critical infrastructure. She has led numerous EU-funded projects, including initiatives under Horizon Europe, and has published extensively on topics such as reliability modeling and human factors in risk management.