CHALLENGES:
- Growing damage from cyber crime
“There are about 40 million cyber criminals <...> in the world and the damage they do is estimated at half a trillion US dollars. However, the number of virus attacks is going up by 3% monthly and the number of money thefts from various devices or e-wallets rises by 3.5%,” said Sergey Plugotarenko, Director, Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC).
- Inadequate legislation to control cyber threats
“The Federal Security Service (FSB) has introduced a draft law, and several other legislative initiatives have appeared, but it is next to nothing compared to what we need in the country,” said Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank.
- Lack of concerted efforts to combat cyber threats
“66% of executives are not ready to share their incidents with other entities, countries or organisations, which is something to be fixed,” said Kyriakos Kokkinos, Executive Director, Partner, IBM Europe; Member of the Board of Directors, Cyprus Investment Promotion Agency.
“Why doesn’t anyone try to unite us? We knock and say – help us, let's join our efforts to fight the plague,” said Stanislav Kuznetsov.
- Accumulation of huge volumes of personal data on the web
“The problem of analysing huge volumes of information on individual users available on the internet, what is now often called big user data,” said Alexander Pankov, First Deputy Head, Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media.
- Poor resistance of small and medium-sized businesses to cyber threats
“Can small and medium-sized businesses today spend a lot of money to set up an effective cyber risk management system? Of course, the answer is no,” said Stanislav Kuznetsov.
- Low digital literacy
“ROCIT holds a study for the second year – digital literacy index. In 2015, the index was 4.79 and in 2016 – 5.42 on the scale of 10,” said Sergey Grebennikov, Director, Centre for Internet Technologies (ROCIT).
SOLUTIONS:
- Adopting a strategic approach to cyber security
“We should adopt a strategic approach and look into technologies that will emerge in 5–10 years and estimate how they will affect information security,” said Yuriy Kurochkin, Head of the Quantum Communications Group, Russian Quantum Centre.
- Reducing the economic appeal of cyber crime
“One example: if you want to stop spam <...> the best way to stop spam is to stop spammers from making money out of it,” said R. Preston McAfee, Corporate Vice President, Chief Economist, Microsoft.
“We are devaluing data, so we are moving the financial incentive for a criminal to engage in fraud,” said Demetrios Marantis, Senior Vice President, Head, Global Government Relations, Visa Inc.
- Setting up information security centres
“The list of cyber threats keeps growing. This Digital Home project has been initiated by Roskomnadzor also to make this list in order to design a solution to mitigate these threats,” said Alexander Pankov, First Deputy Head, Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media.
“Large industries and major corporations must set up in-house centres to combat cyber threats. <...> The next step is the so-called fusion centres, which will single out thousands and even dozens of events out of billions and millions, and which will be able to understand and manage these incidents,” said Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank.
- Designing a defence model as a service
“It is impossible to ensure and sustain a modern security level for a number of businesses. Our mission is to provide this service as needed,” said Vladimir Kirienko, Senior Vice President for Business Development and Management, Rostelecom.
- Improving digital literacy
“First of all, we should introduce digital literacy classes in schools already today in order not to lag behind the rest of the world in IT for another 10–15 years,” said Sergey Grebennikov, Director, Center for Internet Technologies (ROCIT).