Taking into account the tendencies of democratization and informatization of all sectors of the economy and spheres of public administration, and, accordingly, the increase in information risks, the vast majority of countries in the world today go through a series of stages of ensuring information security. Despite the legislatively established powers of the relevant state authorities and local self-government in this area, the issues of defining their competence and effective interaction are real and effective guarantees of preventing a variety of information threats to national security as in this case effective and timely ways of eliminating existing dangers are provided. Given that large-scale invasions and hybrid wars can cause catastrophic harm and undermine public confidence in the government, the state must make quick decisions. Consequently, establishing an effective mechanism for ensuring information security has become more relevant than ever nowadays. The purpose of the academic paper is to clarify the theoretical fundamentals, as well as the components, directions and other critical practical aspects of the process of ensuring the state’s information security under conditions of hybrid warfare. Methodology. In the course of the research, abstraction, idealization, system-structural, comparative, logical-linguistic methods, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction were used to process scientific information on issues of the state’s information security. Results. Based on the research results, the features of the process of ensuring the state’s information security in a hybrid war were studied and certain practical aspects of this issue were clarified.

In particular, information weapons and social media weapons have become a weighty and decisive factor in warfare. Moreover, military conflict models increasingly use information as a weapon in virtual space. The article aims to analyze the peculiarities of the use of information weapons in interstate struggle on the example of empirical assessment of the use of disinformation methods against Ukraine in 2021-2022. Methodology. The study used the methods of cases and content analysis of reports and analytical bulletins of the Centre for Counteracting Disinformation of Ukraine to assess the use of information weapons, in particular the spread of disinformation in the information space of Ukraine. The reports and analytical bulletins from December 3, 2021, to February 21, 2022, were used for content analysis. Results. The main types of misinformation that are spread in the Ukrainian information space are: 1) misleading a particular person or group of people (even an entire nation); 2) manipulation, and 3) creation of the desired public opinion. We determined the main characteristics of fake news (unknown source, manipulative headline, emotional coloring, lack of reference to the head, value judgments). Based on the analysis, trends in the dissemination of false, manipulative information are identified.