On October 15, the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ shared the facts and figures on the pioneering cybersecurity project, Netoscope, at the press conference in Moscow, Russia themed "Uniting Internet companies for safer Internet: first results represented on Netoscope, an analytical portal".
The project started a year ago, when the Coordination Center has created a research platform aimed at collecting and processing information on malicious websites. Today, leading Internet, telecommunications and software companies have partnered with the project, including Group-IB, the Coordination Center, Kaspersky Lab, Mail.Ru, Rostelecom, RU-CERT, the Technical Center of Internet and Yandex. On September 30, Netoscope (!!!ссылка - http://netoscope.ru), an analytical portal, has been launched to represent project results and valuable insights into cybersecurity in the Internet. Netoscope analyzes malicious websites and activities; users can check suspicious domain names and find information on the most recent threats found by the project partners, as well as useful tips on safe browsing.
An animated short telling about the dangers of the cyberspace premiered on the press conference. The project partners also spoke on how Netoscope helps prevent cybercrime and keep the Internet users away from threats. Experts note that Netoscope is a pioneering project in Russia; moreover, Ilya Sachkov, CEO, Group-IB, says that many European countries are now looking forward to the project that united leading Internet companies in Russia. Andrei Kolesnikov, director of the Coordination Center, notes that Netoscope has been created to benefit users in the first place. "We ask people to at the very least be attentive to everything that happens on the global network," Kolesnikov says, "and our project is both a set of tips and a method to protect users from many mistakes and threats". The Coordination Center director also thinks that the project is based on communications between the project partners: "All project partners receive full, comprehensive data on malicious websites and, as a result, can provide safer experiences for their customers", Kolesnikov says. Marina Nikerova, TCI's deputy director, also says educating users is important for safe browsing experiences: "The Technical Center of Internet runs backbone services that are not visible to users: we collect and process data, and develop analytical reports. We would like these reports to be of interest for all users – not only security experts", Nikerova says.
According to Kaspersky Lab's data, an year into the project helped make the Internet in Russia a safer place. "The number of domains spreading malware is 5 times lower than a year ago, the number of spam-sending domains has lowered by 30%, and the number of responses for our web antivirus has lowered by 1.5: from 154,000,000 to 100,000,000 responses in a month", Sergey Golovanov, leading antivirus expert, Kaspersky Lab, says.
The Netoscope's success is largely based on unique data provided by the partners. "Yandex can find the malware sources that other antiviruses are unable to find. The measures that Yandex takes to alert users help lower damage by 25%", Sergey Pevtsov, Yandex's head of safe search department. Mikhail Meschansky, head of anti-spam development at Mail.Ru, also thinks that alerting users is critical for safer Internet: "For each project partner, the united database is very important as we can receive information on malicious resources from other partners. This, in turn, helps increase security for our entire user community".
