MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. Russia together with other BRICS countries, cooperating in the area of information security, will be able to stand against digital colonization, which one country can hardly do alone, Igor Ashmanov, head of the Kribrum company, a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, said in an interview with TASS Analytical Center.

"The issue is not simply about information security, including viruses, cyberattacks, jailbreaking, from which it is necessary to secure. Information security itself contains several deeper layers. For example, digital colonization, which suggests that huge transnational corporations, monsters and IT giants have such technological and money resources that it is very difficult to stand against them at the level of one country," he said following a meeting of experts of the BRICS Civil forum on issues of security in the area of information and communication technologies in Moscow.

BRICS nations will be able to stand against all this by pooling their possibilities, the expert noted.

Russia assumed the one-year rotating chairmanship of BRICS on January 1, 2024. The integration currently contains ten countries. The group, established in 2006, first expanded in 2011, when South Africa joined the four founding nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The decision to invite six more countries to join BRICS, including Argentina, was made at the group’s summit in Johannesburg in August 2023. However, Argentina declined the invitation to join in late December. Five new members (Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia) formally became full-fledged members of the BRICS group on January 1, 2024.