Dmitry Belyavsky: No one country can guarantee IoT security

The 2017 Cyber Security Forum (CSF 2017) opened in Moscow on February 7, as part of the Safe Runet Week, the official Russian series of events for Safer Internet Day. Dmitry Belyavsky, a leading expert with the Technical Center of Internet, spoke during the Epoch 4.0: Internet of Things, Big Data, Digital Security and Digital Sovereignty of Russia session. The speaker listed the threats facing users of the Internet of Things, citing as an example the DDoS-attacks on the US service provider Dyn on October 21, 2016. The attack that used the Mirai botnet and reached 1.2 terabits at peak denied US internet users access to Twitter, Amazon, Tumblr, Reddit, Spotify, Netflix.

The infamous Mirai botnet uses Internet of Things gadgets, which number in the billions. At the same time, no one is seriously concerned about the safety of these gadgets from the network security perspective; in commercial manufacturing simplicity and low cost matter most, while anything that complicates the gadget leads to a rise in price. Therefore, in this situation the efforts of developers and vendors are not enough. “The Internet of Things will inevitably be regulated, but regulation in one country is not enough. International cooperation in this area is inevitable,” Dmitry Belyavsky noted.

The participants also discussed the main issues of Russia’s digital security and digital sovereignty, the security of critical infrastructure and cyber security problems in the context of the import substitution program, and the development of the Internet of Things and the Russian domain space.