Zweiback, Fiset & Coleman Partner Michael Zweiback joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the significance of Russian cyberattacks on Ukrainian government and bank websites and what this could mean for U.S. cybersecurity.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, as we continue to monitor the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are taking a closer look at cyberattacks. Several Ukrainian banks and government websites were forced offline yesterday following an attack. The government now reporting a new wiper attack against Ukrainian organizations, saying that has destroyed data on infected machines.

For more on that, let's bring in Michael Zweiback, Zweiback, Fiset, and Coleman partner. We've also got our very own Alexis Keenan joining in on the conversation. Michael, it's good to talk to you today. Give me your assessment of this latest cyber attack that's happened out in Ukraine. How significant is this in terms of the scale?

MICHAEL ZWEIBACK: Well, it's on a massive scale, and it's part of the integrated military strategy of the Russian government now, especially as they're dealing with attempting to invade countries. And what they're essentially trying to do is debilitate not only the command and control structures of the country, but also impact ordinary citizens. And you saw that yesterday with the fact that they were going after the banking operations of the country in order to basically make it very difficult for people to get money out so that ordinary consumers could flee the country or have money for goods in a very constricted environment.

ALEXIS KEENAN: Michael, Alexis here. Now in addition, you have said that these Russian initiated cyber attacks could eventually impact American citizens and US financial institutions. So can you explain that?

MICHAEL ZWEIBACK: Well, any time you have a scenario in which a country is launching-- this is the Russian military, the GRU-- is launching massive denial of service attacks, which is basically a flooding of the ability of these websites to administer some form of service. And as that begins to degrade, what the impact is that the economy also begins to degrade.

So the ability of the Ukrainian economy to produce goods and services, which are going to be exported to the remainder of Europe, becomes diminished. And that means that they have to make up for that somewhere. And ultimately, what it does is it ends up with higher prices globally, not just higher prices in the Ukraine and Europe.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Michael, it's Brian Cheung here. What might any sort of possible cyber attack on American citizens, to follow up on Alexis's question, though, look like? I mean, what should people be watching out for? I had seen warnings about possible ransomware attacks. What is usually in the Russian playbook for these types of things?