On October 7-8, Moscow hosted the 20th conference of the Russian Association of Networks and Services (RANS) on ICT infrastructure’s current state and development prospects while ensuring trust and security. As a conference partner, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ organized a roundtable meeting on the development of the Russian internet.
Once again, the conference brought together representatives of organizations that regulate, support, develop, and secure the Russian ICT infrastructure.
Over two days, the participants discussed the business models and information culture of digital transformation, 5G network regulation, the best practices of securing critical information infrastructure, storing and processing Big Data, and developing Cyrillic internet addresses. They also spoke about preliminary results and plans to further implement projects in these areas.
The conference opened with a discussion of the importance of ensuring the trust and security of the ICT infrastructure for multiple industries. Speakers, including representatives of the Presidential Executive Office, the Ministry of Digital Development, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Communications Agency, discussed the information security culture, a complex, evolutionary process that does not only affect users but also the companies they work for and the entire society.
The discussion participants agreed that the annual growth in cybersecurity incidents poses many challenges for the Russian internet industry, such as improving the protection of users’ personal data based on new technologies, ensuring the stable operation of communications channels, developing human resources potential with a focus on market demands, lowering the dependence on foreign software and hardware, ensuring access to Russian websites using Russian encryption algorithms, and countering complex attacks on strategic economic sectors.
The discussion of security continued during the Coordination Center’s session, Development of the Russian Internet. Technical Center of Internet CEO Alexei Rogdev, spoke about important global and local events prompting the emergence of new types of attacks, which significantly complicates uninterrupted DNS operation.
“DNS serves as the basis for implementing and developing many technologies, as well as a starting point for collecting Big Data. The Technical Center of Internet is successfully ensuring the stability of Russian domain zones according to international standards,” Alexei Rogdev noted.
MSK-IX Director Yelena Voronina added that the increased workload resulting from numerous companies having switched to remote work had forced internet providers to reinforce the peering component of the infrastructure. She also noted that the number of DNS requests on coronavirus-related domain names had increased since spring.
The participants also discussed problems related to the transition to IPv6, Big Data processing, and the rules of “digital hygiene.” With regard to the last topic, Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev outlined the main conclusions from the report of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace established at the initiative of the UN Secretary-General several years ago. The report states that all stakeholders, including the government, civil society, and technical and business communities, are expected to adhere to responsible conduct on the internet. The document also includes general recommendations on how to make various aspects of the internet safer, calling for such measures as introducing regulations that increase the stability of cyberspace; promoting efforts to train qualified personnel; gathering, analyzing and, most importantly, exchanging information on ICT abuse at the global level; and ensuring compliance with the basic principles of cyber hygiene.
Following the discussion, the participants developed proposals on government involvement in ICT improvement. In particular, it was suggested that government tenders must require support for IDNs, EAI as well as IPv6 and DNSSEC protocols. The participants noted that it is important to design support for IPv6 resolution, Russian encryption algorithms and certified encryption tools for remote legally binding actions across all government websites.
Andrey Vorobyev presented the results of the Coordination Center’s work on Universal Acceptance of domain names and email addresses.
“Starting with the events marking the tenth anniversary of .РФ in May 2020, we have promoted this topic internationally, held training sessions for engineers and hackathons for students, developed Поддерживаю.рф, a project to support Cyrillic addresses, published educational articles on IDNs and EAI together with our partners, and carried out research. A quiz, several tasks in our online championship, and an entire game section of the Study the Internet & Govern It educational project for school students were dedicated to UA. I am sure that the work of the Coordination Center and our foreign colleagues in this area will result in all aspects of the internet becoming multilingual, which also means accessible for as many users as possible,” Andrey Vorobyev said.
Irina Pyzhova, the Coordination Center’s Web Projects Editor-in-Chief, wrote an article dedicated to .РФ and Cyrillic addresses for the latest issue of the RANS magazine. The magazine was distributed among conference participants and its electronic copy will soon be available on the association’s website.
The Coordination Center ran a mobile stand throughout the conference. It presented the methodology for evaluating the market value of previously owned .RU and .РФ domain names, designed for professional market players and intellectual property evaluation experts, as well as for those who buy, sell and own such services.
