Information security expert Natalya Kasperskaya on data vulnerabilities, corporate surveillance and shorter workweeks.
Russia will not be able to avoid repeating someone else's experience in the development of information technologies, but this will not prevent us from using our software products and they cannot be turned off from the outside. This was stated by Natalya Kasperskaya, President of the InfoWatch group of companies, the chairman of the Otechestvenny Soft Association. This will be especially relevant in connection with the aggravation of economic competition, due to which the United States has already gone to the imposition of sanctions against Huawei, and the German authorities prefer to use their own software in state institutions. Also in an exclusive interview with Izvestia, the expert spoke about the dangers of social networks for adolescents and questioned the ability of technology to reduce the number of working days per week to four without economic losses.
Smartphone battle
You often say that digital development is proceeding according to a certain imposed pattern that is not suitable for all economies (for example, India has not achieved GDP growth in this process). What should be our "special path" that will save other countries from mistakes?
- Here, in any case, we will not be able to avoid repeating someone else's experience, since the technologies that need to be developed are the same everywhere. Only the way they are implemented can differ, and there are already opportunities for choosing your own path.
If we talk about information security technologies that are close to me, then in this area the trend of globalization that was relevant ten years ago is now giving way to an obvious division into regions, in which each country tries to use its own developments or the developments of states that it considers close. A striking example of this is Germany, where the use of local software products is recommended to government agencies.
Obviously, such a trend towards technological independence is associated with the aggravation of the political situation, and here the Chinese way can become attractive for the country, when everything is its own - both social networks and instant messengers. Is this possible in Russia, and do you consider the actively discussed law on the "sovereign Internet" a significant step in this direction?
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- The law, dubbed by journalists "the law on the sovereign Internet", in fact does not imply disconnecting Russia from the Internet, but ensuring the operability of the Runet if it is disconnected from the outside. And we have to think about these threats - unfortunately, our "geopolitical partners" are forcing us to resort to decisive measures.
But we probably won't be able to fully adopt the experience of China - after all, their economy is larger than ours. And, importantly, they produce their own computer hardware, and we, having a good position in the field of software development, cannot yet boast of a wide production of electronic components.
There is an opinion: on the way to independence in the IT sphere, we were hindered by the fact that in the past domestic software manufacturers missed a significant part of the domestic market. Can we expect high rates in the areas where this happened?
- Ten years ago, 99% of the programs used in our government agencies were foreign. This was due not so much to the low quality of domestic products as to the powerful lobbying resource of Western companies. Now the situation is changing, and we see especially significant progress in those state-owned companies that have come under sanctions: the share of Russian software there, on average, is about 40% and continues to grow. As the head of the National Software Association of Software Developers (ARPP), I believe that this line should be followed.
True, on this issue, the position of ARPP is at odds, for example, with the opinion of representatives of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), who propose to include adapted foreign developments in the unified register of Russian computer programs and databases. In our opinion, this step will simply nullify the very idea of a registry.
If we have already taken up import substitution, then we need to improve and develop our own products, and not re-label them with foreign ones. This does not solve any problem other than ensuring the well-being of specific suppliers of foreign software. It does not help either the country's security, or the development of the domestic software industry, or the implementation of the Digital Economy of the Russian Federation program.
American sanctions apply not only to Russian businesses, but also to Chinese companies - recently updates of Google services running on Android OS were blocked for Huawei smartphones. Could this be the beginning of a trend towards denying access to popular pressure programs?
- This event is really out of the ordinary - in the sense that the United States tried to solve its loss in terms of technological rivalry in a political way. I think this situation has shown that the United States considers information technologies to be their fiefdom and, of course, wants to deprive other players of the opportunity to use these technologies if necessary. This is a good lesson for Russia, which has become another argument in favor of import substitution: any modern technology can be turned off remotely, and if at this moment we have no alternative, we will find ourselves in a critical situation.
Premiere ideas
Another actively discussed news is the transition to a four-day working week. According to Dmitry Medvedev, this will be possible thanks to digitalization. When do you think technology will reduce the number of working days without economic loss?
- Honestly, I do not see a special connection between technology and the work week … After all, if people do not work (for example, on Friday), then they do not work at any level of technology development.
But progress can increase labor productivity - as far as I understand, this is what the prime minister had in mind
- Perhaps this is true for some industries. For software development, I don't really understand how progress can dramatically increase productivity. For example, programmers sit and write code. If they write it for five days instead of four, then naturally they will write more. This is despite the fact that we use the latest development systems and automatic verification, but it will still not work to radically speed up the writing of code while reducing the working time by 20%. The same is true, for example, for salespeople who will not be able to maintain their previous performance, communicating with customers for four days instead of five.
Let's talk about another initiative - about e-passports, the introduction of which will begin next year. Will the simplification of interaction between the population and the state have a downside in the form of the emergence of new security threats? Will hackers be able to crack my passport?
- Any information technology can be hacked, and an electronic passport is no exception. He, too, can be "hacked", and the likelihood of hacking here will be determined by the interest in a particular person and the value of his personal data. Therefore, information from passports will be leaking out in the same way as it is leaking now from corporate databases. For example, on the Internet you can buy information about employees and clients of large corporations - these are tens of thousands of people (the average price is 5-10 rubles per line in the database).
Nets under the hood
The product of your company, Person Monitor, allows you to see how much of the time an employee spends on work, and how much on personal needs (for example, communication in social networks, games). If we talk about Traffic Monitor, then in its description there is a function of "intercepting messages in social networks and messengers". How legal is this surveillance of employees, and does it violate the constitutional right to privacy of correspondence and telephone conversations?
- For business, there is no clear definition of personal information, however, no one has canceled Article 23 of the Constitution, and in order not to violate it, the employer must obtain formal consent from employees to monitor their communication channels. Thus, each employee independently decides what working conditions are acceptable for him. And in case of consent, he puts his signature under the document, which allows him to trace the channels of his working communication.
In general, this is similar to a notification that video surveillance is being conducted in the office space - usually in this case, a sign is hung near the camera with the words "Smile, they are filming you!" - this is how a person learns about the presence of visual control.
According to the results of a study by the consulting company BCG, this year Russia ranks 25th among 180 countries in the world in terms of attractiveness for digital specialists. As a result, 65% of our IT pros want to work abroad (according to a survey by Kelly Services). Do you feel a shortage of personnel and an active outflow of specialists abroad?
- I don’t believe the ratings, because, as practice shows, they are all biased in one way or another. Here it is better to look at the change in objective indicators that affect the labor market. In particular, due to the depreciation of the ruble in 2014, the level of our wages in dollar terms decreased, and if until that moment they were at the level of Germany, then the situation worsened. On the other hand, the decision to move to another country is influenced not only by the amount of wages, but also by the cost of living, which is lower in Russia than in Europe.
As a leader, of course, I feel high competition for personnel, but this is a normal phenomenon when the market develops and giants like SberTech enter it. In order to overcome this deficit, we need more well-trained graduates, whom companies will have to provide with interesting work and comfortable conditions for its implementation. As practice shows, this is what guarantees that a person will work in the company for a long time and at the same time will not think about emigration.
Nowadays social networks have become the most popular services used by both adults and teenagers. Moreover, the latter are traditionally at risk from such negative influences as propaganda of extremism and the imposition of suicidal behavior. How do you keep young people safe from online threats?
- The main problem is that it is impossible to block any dangerous group from the outside, this must be done by the social network itself - based on its own rules and regulations or by order of the state. Domestic services do just that, but our country cannot demand this from foreign ones (for example, from Facebook). Because Facebook does not fall under Russian jurisdiction and can ignore these regulations. I think in this connection it is necessary to adopt uniform laws, the observance of which will be mandatory for everyone who wants to work on Russian territory.
And the groups you mentioned do exist. And how they exist: according to statistics, the involvement of modern adolescents in them reaches 50%. Of course, this does not mean that half of them are extremists or future suicides. But! They at least inquired about these topics, and this should be taken as an alarming signal.
Moreover, the bans of any groups or resources cannot be a sufficient response to these challenges - together with them it is necessary to offer young people a constructive alternative that can interest them. Without this, as you can imagine, regulation is useless.
Alexander Bulanov
