Rustam Minnikhanov: Because of the growing destructive activity in cyber space, we are facing serious challenges

On 13 June, speaking at a meeting of the Tatarstan Association for Facilitation of the Digital Development, which discussed issues of providing cyber security and was moderated by the Chairman of the Association Council Rifkat Minnikhnov, the Rais (Head) of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov said that the growing destructive activity in cyber space is creating serious challenges.

He said that technological sovereignty of the country is impossible without achievement of sovereignty in the IT- sphere. “Tatarstan has all necessary resources for making a substantial contribution into solution of this critically important task. About 12 thousand students are trained in the spheres of IT and computers at 21 regional universities and in the last 5 years the number of students in these majors increased by 40 per cent and the planned numbers of students, whose education is paid from the budget, grew 1.5 times,” the Rais of Tatarstan emphasized.

He also informed about 3 regional universities, which train IT specialists and which have already established advanced engineering schools, and dynamically developing infrastructure for commercialization of the results of R&D. Having mentioned structures such as the Special Economic Zone of Innoplois, the IT park and its territorial units successfully functioning in computer sciences,  he attracted attention to the fact that in the long-term state programme of scientific and technological development of the republic passed recently the digital industry has been defined as a separate track. “Due to special attention to the IT technologies the annual amount of expenses on their introduction and use increased for nearly 50 per cent in the last five years,” he concluded.

“Our organizations should use domestic information security means and the assigned deputy heads must pass retraining in IT,” Rustam Minnikhanov added.

Speaking at the meeting, the Director General of the Innostage group of companies Aydar Guzairov informed that currently the information security issues are extremely important in Russia as today more than 100 hacking groups attack the Russian Internet segment, having caused more than 150bn rubles of losses in 2022. Even though the coordinated work of the cyber security sphere managed to prevent bigger losses for the country, the situation is still acute, he said.

Aydar Guzairov also told about the project of the inter-university center for cyber threats counter attacks established by four Tatarstan Universities, namely, the Kazan Aircraft University, Kazan Federal University, Kazan State Power Engineering University and the Innopolis University together with the Innostage as their industrial partner, the main aim of which is to ramp up the level of information security of Russian universities.

In the end of the meeting representatives of the universities told its participants about implementation of the project, training IT specialists and the monitoring of their information resources and large enterprises of the republic shared their best practices in protection against cyberattacks and digital security measures implemented by them.