There are quite a few companies that are restricting or even completely halting the sale of their products and services in Russia right now, including IBM and Microsoft for example. Conversely, Russia is taking its measures to enhance the country’s cybersecurity. According to documents from Russia’s minister of digital development, Andrei Chernenko, the Kremlin obviously wants Russian government organizations to stop utilizing foreign servers entirely.
Listen to this story
According to the document published by Andrei Chernenko, Russian government-owned websites and Internet portals are required to improve their security within a week notice. By March 11th, all servers and domain names should be relocated.
Russian state-owned online services must ensure that their domain name system (DNS) servers are situated on Russian soil by Friday. The worldwide DNS is the system that allows hosting providers to transform web names into alphanumeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses which computers can connect with.
External code, such as JavaScript, should not be used on servers outside of Russia either, according to the document being published by Andrei Chernenko.
Russia claims it has no intention of completely disabling Internet access. The Kremlin is said to want to increase the country’s cybersecurity because of the conflict in Ukraine. Russian government organizations are said to be continually facing cyberattacks. The new measures should ensure that Russian government services are protected from malicious Internet traffic.
Data Centers
These measures do not come out of the blue. In fact, the Kremlin initiated current restrictions on free interpretation of Internet infrastructure back in 2019. That’s when controversial legislation was passed to allow for a sovereign Internet under full control of the Russian state.
By directing online traffic through state-controlled data centers and telecom infrastructure and creating a national system of domain names, the bill allows the Kremlin to tighten control over the country’s Internet, RuNet.
In 2019, tens of thousands of Russians flocked to the streets to protest the bill, which human rights groups said threatened free expression and the media.
To learn more about this legislation being adopted in Russia, also read this article: ‘Internet in Russia Now Under State Control.’
