Yevgeny Kaspersky Told SUSU Students about Modern Cyber Threats

South Ural State University hosted Kaspersky CyberDay Conference. Kaspersky Lab international company and the SUSU School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science organized the conference.

The goal of the conference was to discuss information security technology and its possible application to prevent negative effect of cyberattacks on the elements of automated process control systems and Internet of Things devices. The CEO of Kaspersky Lab Yevgeny Kaspersky took part in the conference. He noted that Chelyabinsk and South Ural State University in particular, are actively participating in such a topical activity for the world as information security. Now we are talking more and more about the possibility of cyberattacks on the Internet of Things devices such as smart home appliances, unmanned vehicles and even industrial intelligent systems.

“Today we can enjoy the opportunity to use new technologies; however they are vulnerable and more often subjected to cyberattacks. That is why we are actively engaged in the issues of industrial cyber security, Internet of Things security. And we are very grateful to such partners as SUSU for active participation in the development of our technologies and training of students,” marked Yevgeny Kaspersky. “We cooperate not only with Russian universities but also with those from many other countries in the world to help train personnel for critical infrastructure security against possible threats, since not only computers and smartphones need to be secured, but steel industry, pipe-rolling and other sectors of industry as well. It seems to me that mathematicians are best suited for this work, since they can be retrained to any other profession. Big Data processing, developing of self-learning machines and computer systems require great mathematical background, so I would recommend to everyone to learn Mathematics!

The CEO of the company spoke about global trends in the field of information security and about the fact that cybercrime can be of mass, professional and industrial character, that is, dangerous for hardware in particular. The company registers 380000 new malicious files per day. Some of the dangerous phenomena in digital space can carry national risks and affect critical infrastructure, such as factories, transport, etc. In this connection, the company has developed the immunity for the Internet of Things products, which is the KasperskyOS operating system that creates a safe environment for running untrusted and potentially vulnerable programs.

Kaspersky Lab experts presented their reports on the history of creation and fields of development of the KasperskyOS operating system. Kaspersky Lab strategic architect and the head of the Department of Advanced Technology Andrey Dukhvalov has explained that KasperskyOS is aimed to create environments in which there is no possibility to use vulnerable components for further spread of vulnerability in the system. Head of the Security Product Management Department for Mobile and Workstations of the company Dmitriy Lukiian explained the operating principles and architecture of the KasperskyOS operating system, and the technical features of a microkernel-based approach.

The SUSU School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science presented the work of SUSU in the field of information security. Director of the School Gleb Radchenko noted that the school is engaged in a wide range of tasks in this field including research on the security of data transmission and interception, cybersecurity of the systems of industrial Internet of Things. Information Security Research and Education Centre being the part of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, actively cooperates with Kaspersky Lab.

“The Centre actively interacts with our teachers, students and Kaspersky Lab. The key fields of the Centre include educational activities. So, within the Centre’s work, the Kaspersky Lab experts have conducted an audit of our educational programmes on information security. By the result of an audit, we have improved our curricula and the programmes of our key disciplines on information security. Together with the experts of the company, we are developing new educational courses: a new course on computer network security, which has been created together with the Kaspersky Lab network security experts, is soon to be launched on the Stepik platform. It is quite natural that the project work of students is conducted together with the experts, and now we are presenting systems and applications based on KasperskyOS.”

At the conference, the Head of Department of Information Security Alexander Sokolov spoke about the training of specialists for this field. The event ended with the final of the KasperskyOS IoT Security student research projects competition: student teams presented their solutions, which were assessed by the Kaspersky Lab jury.

“I was interested to learn about the KasperskyOS operating system and plans of the company for the future. Today I have presented a report on a security project for the Modbus protocol. Within this project we have solved problems of security at manufacturing, and at automated process control systems in particular,” said the participant of the winning team, student of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science Semen Beschastnov.

Information on Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab is an international cybersecurity company established in 1997. In-depth expert knowledge and many years of experience of the company are the basis for the next generation security solutions and services providing security for businesses, critical infrastructures, government bodies and common users. The comprehensive portfolio of Kaspersky Lab includes advanced products for termination devices security, as well as a number of specialized solutions and services to protect against complex and constantly evolving cyber threats. Kaspersky Lab technology protects over 400 millions of users and 270 thousands of corporate clients all over the world. Read more at www.kaspersky.ru.