On October 19-20, Sochi hosted Spectrum-2021. The 20th forum focused on regulating information and communications technology. The Coordination Center for TLD.RU/.РФ was the forum’s anniversary partner, and its experts participated in the event program.
The forum opened with greetings from First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko and Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev. Tatyana Matveyeva, Head of the Presidential Directorate for the Development of Information and Communications Technology and Infrastructure, and Andrei Lipov, Head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), also spoke at the opening.
Sergei Kiriyenko noted in his remarks that ensuring national security in cyberspace is a shared responsibility for businesses and authorities; therefore, it is important to work together on developing and coordinating approaches to this task. “As in the previous years, regulating information and communications technology is the major topic of the forum. It is fundamentally important that representatives of the telecommunications industry can discuss this matter directly with representatives of regulatory authorities and the government. The state is equally interested in the stable operation of Russian communications networks and the national segment of the internet, as well as their protection from potential negative impact,” he stressed.
Head of Roskomnadzor Andrei Lipov spoke about the importance of protecting users from malicious content, uncontrolled sharing of personal data, fraud, and child and teenage abuse, and called for communications providers to cooperate. “The providers must essentially be trusted representatives of the state in communications network for the sake of public security. We must continue to take joint action to build up our technological resources for countering threats,” Andrei Lipov said.
On October 20, Director of the Coordination Center Andrey Vorobyev spoke during a session on the development of Runet. He reported on new tools for maintaining the uninterrupted operation of the .RU and .РФ addressing system.
Andrey Vorobyev spoke about the background, purpose and capabilities of the DATA ESCROW data deposit service and the backup system for domain name registration created on the basis of the EBERO tool in cooperation with MSK-IX. A registry may choose to switch to the backup system if the current operator of the registration system fails to maintain the required level of operation. Following the backup system’s successful functional testing by experts from the Coordination Center and MSK-IX in late June 2021, the system was put in standby mode in July.
Andrey Vorobyev noted that a range of organizational and technical solutions had already been created to ensure the error-free functioning of the .RU and .РФ addressing system – but the work continues. “We plan to further improve and test various emergency scenarios,” he added.
MSK-IX Director General Yelena Voronina and Director General of the Technical Center of Internet Alexei Rogdev were also among the speakers at the session. In her report on the DNS infrastructure for Russian country-code domains, Yelena Voronina offered a detailed account of the development of the DNS infrastructure in Russia over the past 30 years. She also described the current state and development prospects of the .RU and .РФ DNS cloud.
Alexei Rogdev presented a report on the secure and stable operation of government domains, with examples of risks faced by government websites (both DNS and web). He pointed out that the web is most important because it is the basic user technology for electronic government services. Alexei Rogdev listed types of technological threats to government websites and concluded that it is necessary to develop internal distribution systems and a dedicated registrar for government domains. This approach will reduce the degree of centralization and the extent of dependence on large foreign services, thus increasing the independence and reliability of government websites.
As the Coordination Center had been granted the anniversary partner status for the forum (the Coordination Center marks its 20th anniversary this year), all speakers received commemorative badges. Forum participants also took part in a quiz marking the anniversary of the forum and the Coordination Center, and enjoyed a gala dinner on October 20.
