Russia included in the top five countries with the most developed cyber war

Domestic supplier of DLP-systems Zecurion Analytics in its own estimates suggests that Russia may have the fifth most advanced cyber armies, the newspaper Kommersant reports . In this context, “cyber warfare” means specialized cybersecurity units for military or intelligence purposes. The Zecurion assessment claims that the cyber capabilities of the Russian Federation are bypassed only by the USA, China, the United Kingdom and South Korea.

In the understanding of Zecurion, cyber warlike people are engaged in espionage, blackmail, cyber attacks and information wars. Such units affect the mood and behavior of countries. The more developed the country, the more vulnerable it is: the equipment is more and more dependent on the Internet, notice the company. Vulnerable devices of individual users, their machines, the infrastructure of countries.

An example of such activity is the cyber attack by the Stuxnet worm in 2010; it is assumed that the development of the US and Israeli secret services was aimed at disabling uranium enrichment centrifuges of Iran’s nuclear program. Another recent example of possible cyber arm involvement is the results of the US presidential election. The Russian special services are suspected in connection with the hacking groups Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear , who hacked into the servers of the National Committee of the US Democratic Party and published compromising materials. Thus, the Russian state structures could influence the election result. Fears of this led to sanctions against the FSB, the GRU, several companies who saw involvement in the incident, the expulsion of diplomats and other people from the United States. The escalation of the conflict continues to this point.
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According to the Zecurion, Russia ranks fifth in terms of the number and financing of such cyber divisions. Kommersant cites a table based on its own source and Zecurion Analytics information.

A country	Financing, million $ per year	The number of people
USA	7,000	9000
China	1500	20,000
Great Britain	450	2000
South Korea	400	700
Russia	300	1000
Germany	250	1000
France	220	800
North Korea	200	4,000
Israel	150	1000

The data presented by Zecurion was criticized by Solar Security's marketing director, Valentin Krokhin. In the commentary for Kommersant, he noted several problems with a similar assessment:

• The UK Government Communications Center (GCHQ) employs 6,000 people. It is unclear how Zecurion analysts have determined that only 2,000 of them are engaged in cyber attacks.
• Espionage, cyber attacks and information wars are the competence of technological intelligence. As a rule, these are civilian agencies that cannot qualify for military budgets.
• There are cyber commands in military structures, but they are - at least de jure - protecting the infrastructure of military cyber systems. In this case, do not distinguish protection from attack.

Krokhin notes that the cyber parts of South Korea, Israel, Iran and Estonia are the most developed, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and France are in doubt. Now no country recognizes that it is attacking information systems of other states, Krokhin said.

Zecurion is a Russian company that develops DLP systems to protect against information leaks, is engaged in research and consulting in the field of information security. At the end of last year, the Ministry of Communications and Communications included the Zecurion DLP solution for monitoring information leakage channels in the Russian software registry.