Azerbaijan bolsters cybersecurity with national G-cloud Digital sovereignty amid geopolitical turmoil

The geopolitical confrontation between the world's leading power vectors, which escalated two years ago into an open military conflict in Ukraine, has recently touched more and more civilian spheres.

Thus, at the end of February 2024, the United States imposed blocking sanctions on the Russian Internet, ISPs, data processing centres (DPCs), etc. Historically, the world's leading DATA centres are located in the US and Europe, and therefore public and private entities in many countries have used these servers to store their digital databases, web resources, etc. However, in the current realities, the protection of critical information of state structures requires the localisation of storage servers in the countries themselves. Azerbaijan is moving along this path, and according to the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport, the transfer of info systems to the Government Cloud has accelerated.

The disintegration of the single market has emerged across the globe, and not only chains in the energy, raw materials and transport sectors are collapsing, but also the fragmentation of the once whole global network space. At present, trends towards clustering have also intensified, and restrictions and sanctions are being imposed. A clear example of such confrontation in the IT sphere is the sanctions imposed on February 23 this year by the US Department of the Treasury against the largest Russian providers of public data processing centres (DPCs), as well as several commercial network operators, integrators and computer vendors.

Leading Russian DPCs and a dozen IT sector structures and software companies are accused of having ties with sub-sanctioned enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex. In addition to restrictions on network space and hosting services, Russian providers and other IT structures have been deprived of access to purchases of Western server equipment, software licences, etc. What is happening fits into the general framework of the sanctions measures of the West, which is trying to deprive the Russian IT sector not only of access to digital technologies, but also indirectly to limit the influence of Russian information resources by restricting their access to global servers.

It is noteworthy that this strategy is quite well developed and, to varying degrees, similar pressure on digital potential and Internet capabilities has been applied to North Korea, Iran, a number of Arab states, Venezuela and other countries that have "complicated" relations with the collective West. It is also relevant to recall here that geopolitical tensions between the global West and Eurasia have played the role of a trigger for a new round of network wars, while criminal cyberthreats, which pose serious risks to the corporate, public and financial sectors of many countries around the world, have increased markedly.

Hacker attacks coordinated by intelligence agencies on media portals, websites and digital document management systems of government agencies, and e-Government service portals have increased manifold worldwide.

Azerbaijan is also exposed to these risks, where they are consistently strengthening the fight against cybercrime and implementing reforms aimed at comprehensive protection of the country's digital space. In recent years, consistent work has been carried out in Azerbaijan through the efforts of the State Service for Special Communications and Information Security and other relevant structures to protect the servers and web resources of the most important state and public organizations, defense and industrial systems of the republic.

Within the framework of the strategic programme "National Priorities of Socio-Economic Development: Azerbaijan 2030" adopted about two years ago, the digitalisation of the economy, public utilities and social structures of the country was identified as the most important priority of the country's development. In particular, by relying on the basic network infrastructure in our country, it is necessary to accelerate the development of digital economy, expand innovative production and service sector, create prerequisites for accelerating the development of human capital, including in software business, startups, etc.

It is quite obvious that in order to meet the challenges ahead, our country must strengthen cybersecurity and ensure the sustainable functioning of the network infrastructure. The key tool for achieving these goals should be to build up the capacity of DATA centres and to form an efficient and secure Government Cloud (G-cloud) system on this basis. To this end, a decree of the president dated June 3, 2019 approved the establishment of the G-cloud system in Azerbaijan and the adoption of measures in the field of cloud services.

The purpose of creating a centralised Government Cloud system is to improve the efficiency of the process of forming, storing, maintaining and integrating government information systems and to ensure the security of the primary and backup database. These efforts are designed to ensure reliable operation of government information systems, deployment of their infrastructure and unification of all processes through common operating and software standards.

Today, the process of creating the "Government Cloud" is nearing its final stage: according to the data published the previous day by the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport of Azerbaijan (MDT), full or partial migration of information systems and resources of government agencies to DATA-centres located in Baku and Yevlakh that meet the requirements of the international standard Uptime Institute TIER III is underway.

Azerenerji OJSC became the next government agency to transfer its information systems and web resources to the Government Cloud. As part of the transition to the "Government Cloud", the JSC received access to the virtual server service IaaS ("Infrastructure as a Service"), provided by the structure of the MDGC - AzInTelecom LLC. According to the information of the IDGC, with the transition to the G-cloud system, Azerenerji ensured the high availability of its critical systems by partially placing its information systems in the Baku-based DATA centre.

What advantages do government agencies and, in the future, private companies gain by transferring their web resources and electronic management systems under the wing of G-cloud? Until relatively recently, many state and private structures in Azerbaijan did not use the advantages of cloud storage and DATA-centres due to inertia, creating their own server structures. Such duplication of functions led to an unjustified waste of funds and complicated operational processes, forcing each government agency or private company to maintain a large staff of system administrators, cybersecurity officers, etc. But even this did not always save information sites and server databases from massive attacks by hackers.

On the contrary, when migrating public institutions to the "Government Cloud", the current costs of the IT sphere are reduced, the performance of network systems is increased, and most importantly, the security of information systems is further improved, a stable and sustainable IT infrastructure is formed, quality service delivery with operational coordination and round-the-clock monitoring service of AzInTelecom specialists.

Other benefits include increasing the efficiency of the process of formation, storage, maintenance and integration of public and private information systems and ensuring the security of the main and backup database. Innovations in the work of DATA centres will increase the efficiency of such important initiatives on digitalisation of the economy and public administration in Azerbaijan as Big Data, accelerate the implementation of the Smart City and Smart Village concepts.

Another advantage of developing a powerful G-cloud infrastructure in Azerbaijan is the possibility of using local DATA centres for transit, export functions and providing international hosting services: thus, content delivery to the countries of the region - Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. - has already been established. In recent years, local DATA servers have hosted cache servers of the Facebook social network, Google search engine, and a number of other international search and social systems. This not only allows to increase foreign exchange earnings but also makes it many times easier for compatriots to work on the Internet, as the location of part of the database in local servers reduces the time of IP-signal transit.