This is a major change: Russian cybersecurity

Note from Amarynth: My comments follow:

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How does Russia plan to boost its cybersecurity?

President Vladimir Putin has prohibited all Russian government agencies as well as strategic and systemically important organizations from using cybersecurity services provided by unfriendly countries starting from January 1, 2025.

Here is how the ban will boost Russia’s information security.

🌏 The ban is an extension of the May 2022 presidential decree that prohibited the use of information protection tools originating from unfriendly countries starting January 1, 2025.

🌏 Furthermore, a decree was signed stipulating the creation of specialized cybersecurity units in federal executive bodies, state funds, and corporations.

🌏 The new decree is supplemented by a ban on the use of “information security services provided (performed, rendered) by these organizations.”

🌏 New restrictions “apply to the use of international open source repositories (like GitHub), cloud services and technologies.”

🌏 Import substitution, or transition to domestic software, must be completed by January 1, 2025.

🌏 New restrictions are geared to clamp down on foreign VPN services being used by companies to bypass blocks and restrictions, as per Swordfish Security.

🌏 Putin’s decree cracks down on companies using “unfriendly software in a service format,” and thus formally circumventing the previous decree.

🌏 “Individual, mainly IT companies, could offer software tool rental as a service or provision of software on a subscription basis. The decree will help protect critical infrastructure entities from such companies,” according to Security Code.

Putin’s decree was published the day after the US introduced new sanctions to prohibit “the supply to any person in the Russian Federation of (1) IT consultancy and design services; and (2) IT support services and cloud-based services for enterprise management software and design and manufacturing software. The determination will take effect on September 12, 2024.”

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Comment: I do not know whether it is possible to divorce all software services and provision dependant on who created the product. In repositories like Github (mentioned here) there are all kinds of nationalities. Techs of this kind like to work with others, and they like to solve sticky and tough problems. Software as a Service, or Software as a Tool (mentioned here) is a very large part of Information Technology. There is also the vast repositories of free software (Linux, like Linux and many more), to contend with. It is much easier in this case to investigate the ones that access the product, rather than to try and not use anything that comes from anywhere else.

I was mindful of this while working on the concept of GlobalSouth.co. And there was no way then, and no way now that I can avoid all Western software. Show me a replacement for WordPress for example, that is as easy and free of trouble and mature, in other words no bleeding edge problems. I want to run a site, not run software. On the Chinese side, they have good software, but it is Chinese focused. TikTok is initially a Chinese product .. there you can see the difference in social imprinting .. I hate those short TikTok videos, but people are using them very effectively and productively.

The the technical world and I would dare to say the whole of the technical world, not just Information Technology is not made for separateness. I have had my times of working 24 to 36 hours straight, existing on pizza and coke down in the basement and dealing with techs out of India with responses such as … “here where I am sitting beside myself, I do not know what is happening”. (Nothing against Indians, and the comment was very funny, but the support services were and are clustered there, i.e., outside of the country of work. This is common everywhere that support is clustered).

There still is some of my conceptual work in a certain segment of Chinese Software, and there is some Chinese conceptual work right here.

This is a divorce made in hell. There are other ways. In fact, one should go through product by product and it will take literally years of teamwork and by the time you are done, there will be a new generation of Information Technology products. I cannot even imagine. The internet is built on open source software. Russian technical decision and law makers, I am laughing at you! Think Telegram! Think TikTok! Think Crypto! More serious, think technical solutions for technical problems. Yes, build and invest in your own Information Technology products, but do not shut off the knowledge base because you cannot feel confident in your ability to equally build in invest in cybersecurity. The technical knowledgebase does not lie in countries, it exists in the minds and creativity of very clever technologists.