Growth of Interest in the UrFU Information Security Programs

10:11, February 27, 2023

Not by chance: 100 thousand DDoS attacks occurred in the Urals Federal District in 2022

Over the last four years, interest in the Bachelor's and Master's degree programs at Ural Federal University, which focus on information security, has increased significantly. Among foreign students as well. Ilya Obabkov, Head of the UrFU Institute of Radioelectronics and Information Technologies, told about it at a press conference in the TASS News Agency.

"The number of foreign students applying to the information security program has increased fourfold in four years. Now, we have 320 first-year students enrolled in UrFU, including the master's program. Moreover, we have seen a growing activity of partners: they also take part in conducting classes and preparing diploma theses. As an example we can mention the Urals Center for Security Systems, the Institute of Radioelectronic Systems, Gamma, SKB Kontur, and Sber. Concerning the master's program: since last year there has been interest in it. We took the experience of the leading Russian university MIPT, adding the services of the Urals Center for Security Systems, and made the master's program. Enrollment has grown many times over," said Ilya Obabkov.

Experts believe that this educational direction will be in demand. Only in 2022, intruders in the Urals Federal District committed twice the number of attacks compared to 2021. Stanislav Lukyanenko, Head of Regional Sales Development Group at Rostelecom-Solar Unified State Health Information System "West", told about it.

"An increasing number of DDoS attacks aiming to render infrastructure inoperable have been launched. Moreover, these attacks have become multi-layered and complicated: it's hard to repel them in the usual way. We also faced the problem related to the fact that foreign manufacturers of data protection products started to leave our country. All together, it became a challenge for us, and I believe that we are successfully coping thanks to many public sectors, organizations and manufacturers," noted Stanislav Lukyanenko.

Moscow became the absolute leader in the number of DDOS attacks, while intruders attacked about 100 thousand organizations in the Urals Federal District in 2022. The majority of compromised organizations were located in the Tyumen and Chelyabinsk Regions, and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District. A quarter of the affected infrastructures in the Urals is in the public sector. The interest of intruders is due to the fact that if an attack is successful, access to the information systems which provide various services may be lost. In addition, the food industry, fuel and energy complex, telecommunications are also affected. However, everything is not as bad as it may seem: DDOS-attacks meet with a decent response on their way.

The topic of information security will also be discussed at the Ural Federal University events called "IT Peak" to be held in March and September.

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office. 
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