July 28, 2016
The issues of collective security in contemporary conditions shall be viewed in the context of close cooperation of the interested parties only. This is first of all the case of fight on terrorism and extremism. Elaboration and adoption of efficient measures is directly dependent on coordination of efforts at the national, regional and international levels.
Over the past decade, the anti-terrorism agenda has increasingly included the problems of terrorist use of new information-communication technologies.
The risk of their manifestations and the scale of proliferation have been rising year by year. The respective counter-measures have already been taken. And there are certain advances in different states and at different international fora.
The security agencies, special services, law enforcement of the CIS member-states are also oriented to counteract those criminal encroachments. We consider the protection of the information-communication space as an important and inseparable component of the national security and informational sovereignty.
Technological capabilities of cyber subversive actions, their anonymity and the scale of consequences drastically change perception of the content of what we call a cyber-terrorism. Consequentially, the counter-measures shall take a radically new look.
Today it is critical to shape and test the technologies and algorithms of timely identification and neutralization of such challenges. Both governments and business bear equal responsibility here. The efforts of one party shall be supported and followed up with respective moves of the other party.
It is the partnership approach which can identify the hidden counter-terrorism reserves. In this regard, I would like to dwell on the best practice of international anti-terrorism cooperation in the Commonwealth of Independent States and to mention as an example a Cyber-Anti-Terror 2016 exercise organized by the CIS Anti-Terrorism Center and State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus in May-June this year. The exercise involved special units of the security agencies of the Republic of Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.
The Lukoml power plant was chosen as a hypothetical target for a terrorist attack. That was not a random choice. Facilities featuring similar technological characteristics are available in all CIS countries. That is why the mastered measures can be successfully employed at other power plants.
The security agencies of five states, which were the participants of the exercises, under control of the CIS ATC coordination HQ conducted coordinated operations to identify and neutralize intruders and to localize cyber-attacks. With that, capabilities of civil structures specialized in development and implementation of modern technological and technical solutions in the information security were employed.
Our exercise allowed the competent agencies of the Commonwealth states creating a model of probable attack and practicing joint operations on the one hand and identifying the problems and finding their solutions to improve regional anti-terrorism security on the other hand.
The security agencies, special services and law enforcement of our countries generally have a common approach to countering cyber-threats. The priority is given to the key infrastructure, power, transport facilities, technological process automated control systems, armament and weapon depots, as well as places of mass and sporting events. The joint operations to prevent and suppress the encroachments are envisaged in CT and CE short-term and mid-term strategies.
The persisting terrorist threats dictate a severe necessity in strengthening anti-terrorism coalition. A sound experience of cooperation of the CIS security agencies, special services and law enforcement in preventing terrorist acts with use of information-communication technologies allows for the following conclusions:
Firstly. Today there is a need in not just a defense in depth, but an offensive strategy. It shall be simultaneously implemented at the strategic and operational levels. National and inter-state concepts of information security constitute one of the basic elements of such strategy. Nowadays such strategies have been created and implemented in the CIS.
Secondly. Regional and national initiatives and special programs have the highest capacity today. Their aim is to ensure cooperation in countering activity of the terrorist and extremist organizations in the context of development of modern communication technologies.
Thirdly. Specific application tasks in the regional context are efficiently solved at the operational level. So and in no other way we can successfully master algorithms of formation and counteraction of cyber-threats, ensure interaction of not only information-communication systems of variable countries but specialized structures as well which are in charge of security in general. Fourthly. It is necessary to constantly strengthen technological capabilities to detect and suppress terrorist information in social media. Business and civil society are potential partners of the government in this case. It is paramount to target the IT-companies at elaborating rules of procedure of identification and blocking of materials related to terrorism and extremism.
I am confident that if we fully employ the available capacities of mutually beneficial cooperation, we will be able to organize efficient counteraction to terrorist encroachments in the information-telecommunication sphere.
