A center for combating cybercrimes, telephone spam and phishing will be created in Russia as part of a government program for the digital economy, the TASS news agency reported earlier this week, citing Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev, reports East-West Digital News (EWDN).

In an attempt to exclude even the smallest external risks of disruption, the ministry has begun independent testing of all state information systems for security holes.

On its side, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media is creating an governmental working group to combat telephone fraud. This working group includes representatives of the largest mobile operators, credit institutions, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service, Roskomnadzor and the Bank of Russia.

In late October, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, announced plans to launch “a cyberpolygon designed for training information security specialists.” 

Medvedev sees in this project “a serious model with full-fledged infrastructure.” 

More AI, more cybercrime?

The former Prime Minister also noted that the extension of the use of artificial intelligence will lead to an increase in the number of challenges for state security.

“For all states this is a priority topic and, of course, we are talking about creating a reliable system to protect people, business, and the state from various information threats, including cyber fraud, the problems with which have become more and more serious during the pandemic,” TASS quoted Medvedev as saying.

According to a new global PwC study cited by Russian business news company RBC, 42% of Russian companies (vs. 51% world average) plan to increase the number of cybersecurity specialists in 2021. The majority of executives (52% in Russia, 55% globally) plan to increase spending on cybersecurity. 

The growing demand for cybersecurity specialists in Russia is also confirmed by online job search platform HeadHunter. The number of vacancies for such jobs in Russia is growing at double-digit rates:  from January to October 2020 there were almost 30,000 new vacancies up from some 17,000 for the whole 2018.

 

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This article first appeared in East-West Digital News here, a partner of bne IntelliNews