Israel, Türkiye to strengthen Azerbaijan's cybersecurity Analysis by Caliber.Az

Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, there has been an unprecedented increase in threats to global network security. In the first half of the year, a particularly high level of traditional hacker cyber threats - phishing, social engineering and site cloning - remains in the post-Soviet space. It is not surprising that the increased global risks are pushing Baku to take additional measures to protect its cyberspace. For this purpose, the Association of Cybersecurity Organisations of Azerbaijan has recently been established, a number of agreements have been signed with relevant Turkish structures, and banks' IT security systems are being rebuilt. And the day before, an agreement was signed with the Technion - the Israeli Institute of Technology on the establishment of an Azerbaijani Cybersecurity Centre.

According to Ukraine's State Communications Service, during the four months of the war, Russian hackers, closely coordinating their activities with the special services, committed about 800 large-scale cyber attacks, mainly aimed at the IT resources of government and local authorities, as well as the defence, financial and energy sectors of the republic. Transport infrastructure and telecommunications, including electronic media and TV channels, also remain in the field of view of Russian network attackers. However, the scale of the cyberwar unfolding since the end of February goes far beyond the confrontation between Moscow and Kyiv.

According to a recently published report by Microsoft – "Defence of Ukraine: the first conclusions about cyber warfare", recently Russian special services have significantly intensified attacks on the information resources of the United States and its allies. The main target of hackers outside Ukraine were databases of American organisations of interest to intelligence. In general, attempts to steal data from 42 states of the Western bloc were recorded, and in addition to the resources of official structures, data warehouses of analytical centres and humanitarian organisations were hacked. According to Microsoft estimates, 29 per cent of the analysed hacks were successful, of which a quarter turned into data theft.

The methods and practices of global cybercrime are increasingly being used as an instrument of ideological and military-political struggle and cyber-espionage between the leading powers of the world. China, Russia, the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea), Iran and a number of South American countries are among the states where the special services are very actively using cyber groups and stimulating the "patriotic" activities of hacker groups.

However, the increased confrontation of special services in cyberspace is far from the only and not the biggest threat faced by corporate and individual users on the network. In particular, Tural Mammadov, head of Azerbaijan's State Special Communications and Information Security Service, recently reported that the main types of cyber threats identified over the past year in our country are phishing attacks, social engineering and the creation of clone sites of mass media, government agencies and other organisations. Of course, measures are being taken in Azerbaijan to prevent cyber threats, and in order to reduce such risks, along with local web security systems, special services have been created in private and state-owned companies in recent years that successfully prevent cyber attacks on important state Internet resources and protect computers of the most important civil, defence and industrial systems. In particular, we are talking about the computer incident response team - the Electronic Security Centre (CERT). This structure is an effective mechanism that identifies and prevents threats to state web resources and the Internet space of the country as a whole.

However, the process of mass digitalisation poses a number of challenges to Azerbaijani society. First of all, this is the need to form a society ready for cyber attacks. Alas, as in most post-Soviet countries, a segment of ordinary users remains at serious risk in Azerbaijan, increasingly facing network threats and vulnerabilities that have intensified worldwide since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. In the post-pandemic period, many employees of companies still work from home, exchanging data with the office via personal computers via the home Internet, and this has increased the threat of data loss or attacks on corporate sector servers. Freelancers, IT business representatives, numerous e-commerce and e-services participants, and media representatives face similar risks - in short, everyone who works and provides services outside corporate networks is controlled by experienced IT administrators.

Not so long ago, the State Service for Special Communications and Information Security, together with the E-Government Development Centre and the Bestsolution company, launched a cybersecurity knowledge verification system - kibergigiyena.az to increase the "cyber hygiene". According to Mammadov, this platform is actively used by Azerbaijani citizens, and the initial results show that the level of cyber awareness in the country is not high enough and requires serious work to inform the population.

At the same time, Azerbaijan needs to strengthen security in the insurance and banking sectors, and there is still a need for experienced cybersecurity specialists, it is also necessary to develop centres for advanced training of new personnel.

To overcome bottlenecks and strengthen the protection of the network space in the republic, it is planned to adopt a new strategy for the development of the cybersecurity sector of Azerbaijan for 2022-2027 and amend legislation in the field of cybersecurity. In turn, since April 2022, at the initiative of the Central Bank, large-scale transformations in the field of cybersecurity in the financial sector have been launched in the country. A new mechanism is being introduced - the "Information Security Management Procedure in Banks", in connection with which structural changes are being made in digital processes, including control tools, risk management and the introduction of monitoring systems.

The Association of Cybersecurity Organisations of Azerbaijan (AKTA), established in April, will serve similar purposes, whose responsibilities are charged with improving network literacy and security of society through educational and informational work, covering primarily the protection of the individual and public network segment. AKTA specialists will have to popularise the services of more secure "cloud" database storage, the use of other services and services of DATA centres, the introduction of advanced antivirus protection tools, as well as support domestic startups, software companies conducting research on the development or implementation of international products in the field of network security. AKTA's responsibilities also include the protection of national interests, the fight against disinformation on the web and the protection of domestic information resources.

"Cooperation with the private sector on short-term development programmes, as well as on professional development programmes is of interest to us. We see that there is a need for a large number of qualified IT specialists in the country," AKTA Chairman Rakhid Alekperov said recently, stressing that there is also a demand to increase the level of training of specialised specialists in the country's educational system.

A new project with the well-known Israeli Institute of Technology - Technion will help Azerbaijan overcome the problem of the lack of competent cybersecurity specialists. During the visit to Israel of the Azerbaijani Digital Development and Transport Ministry delegation, led by Minister Rashad Nabiyev, an agreement was signed with Technion, with the support of which the Azerbaijani Cybersecurity Centre will be established. The teaching staff of Technion will conduct the training within the framework of the programme in Baku, and over the next three years, the centre will train over a thousand cybersecurity specialists, as well as local instructors. The training at the centre is in English and will be available to Azerbaijani citizens over the age of 18.

Recently, the Azerbaijani Digital Development and Transport Ministry has established close cooperation with the Turkish Presidential Administration's Defence Industry Committee and Digital Transformation Office, with the support of which a number of programmes aimed at developing human capital, including in the field of cybersecurity, as well as participation in the development of the "government cloud" are being formed. Turkish IT specialists and their Azerbaijani colleagues will cooperate in projects to develop cybersecurity programmes as an alternative to foreign software products.