President Joe Biden warned business leaders and government agencies that fresh intelligence uncovered a growing threat of cyberattacks initiated by the Russian government. 

“This is a critical moment to accelerate our work to improve domestic cybersecurity and bolster our national resilience,” Biden said in a statement.

“I have previously warned about the potential that Russia could conduct malicious cyber activity against the United States, including as a response to the unprecedented economic costs we’ve imposed on Russia alongside our allies and partners,” he added.

Biden accentuated the presumed increased potential of Russian cyber activities by placing his name on the latest warning, as he strongly encouraged companies to “harden your cyber defenses immediately.”

Underlining that threat, albeit apparently unrelated and without obvious ties to the Russian government, multiple tech companies notified customers of significant breaches carried out by the Lapsus$ hacking group within hours of Biden’s warning.

Okta said it detected an attempt to compromise the account of a third party customer support engineer and Microsoft is investigating claims that sensitive information about its Azure cloud was compromised. Other recent high-profile victims of Lapsus$, which claims it’s purely driven by money not politics, include Nvidia, Samsung, and Ubisoft.

Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said “the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in the United States,” during a press gathering at the White House, according to Politico. 

“To be clear, there is no intelligence that there will be a cyberattack on critical infrastructure,” Neuberger said, describing the latest intelligence as “preparatory activity.”

Federal agencies communicated with more than 100 U.S. companies to share information on the latest intelligence and provide tools to improve cybersecurity, she added.

While the threat of cyberattacks remains omnipresent, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has the U.S. and its allies on heightened alert. The U.S. government and many other countries have imposed strict sanctions on the Russian economy and oligarchs that control much of the country in a bid to cripple Russia’s financial wherewithal to continue its acts of extreme violence in Ukraine. 

The U.S. government will use every tool to deter or respond to cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, but the federal government can’t be the only line of defense, Biden said in his statement. “Most of America’s critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector and critical infrastructure owners and operators must accelerate efforts to lock their digital doors.”

The White House also released a fact sheet outlining methods and instruments U.S. companies can use to strengthen their defense. Best practices, according to the U.S. government, include multi-factor authentication, modern security tools, routine checks of systems patches designed to protect against vulnerabilities, consistent offline data backups, emergency plan exercises, data encryption, and employee training.