Fatherland in cybersecurity – Newspaper Kommersant No. 182 (7383) dated 03.10.2022

By the end of 2022, the cybersecurity market in Russia will increase by 20%, to RUB 150.1 billion. The key growth factors will continue to be accelerated import substitution and the state’s close attention to this process. The bulk of purchases so far is also observed in the public sector and at critical infrastructure facilities, and not in the commercial segment.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the research of TAdviser devoted to the prospects for the development of the information security market in Russia. It follows from this that the market growth in 2022 can be up to 20%, while in 2021 it was 16% and reached 125.1 billion rubles. The key beneficiaries of growth in 2022 will be Russian cybersecurity developers. According to TAdviser analysts, the growth of the segment is facilitated by the acceleration of import substitution due to the departure of foreign market participants, increased attention of the country’s leadership to information security issues, “resonant incidents in the field of security and possible tightening of responsibility for them.”

Analysts also note that already in 2023 a new factor will affect the procurement of solutions: the creation of a register of unacceptable events in the field of cybersecurity of the Ministry of Digital Development, which will contain information on the most critical threats for various sectors of the economy (see “Kommersant” dated August 23). TAdviser considers shortage of hardware in the Russian market to negative factors which slow down growth.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, almost all foreign companies in the field of cybersecurity left the Russian market: the Slovak ESET, the Czech Avast and the American Fortinet, NortonLifeLock Inc., Forcepoint (Websense), Cisco Systems and others. At the same time, the number of attacks on the Russian IT infrastructure has increased several times, which has increased the demand for products from business and the public sector. The authorities began to tighten regulation of this sphere: according to the presidential decree of May 1, government agencies are prohibited from using protective equipment from “unfriendly” countries from 2025.

Despite the introduced measures, while the ratio of foreign and domestic solutions in the field of cybersecurity used by end users varies greatly depending on the industry, TAdviser notes: while among commercial structures the ratio of foreign solutions and Russian solutions is approximately 50% to 50%.

Many developers of information security solutions entered the market with a focus on corporations, so their solutions can be complex and expensive for this category, explains Alexey Parfentiev, head of the SearchInform analytics department. For example, a piece of software (SW) cannot be purchased under the subscription model favored by small businesses. Such companies are very sensitive to price offers and previous investments, in addition, as a rule, they lack specialists in the field of information security and IT in general, adds Anna Kulashova, managing director of Kaspersky Lab in Russia and the CIS.

The deterrent for the growth of the cybersecurity market in Russia is the announced partial mobilization, according to Kommersant’s interlocutors in the industry. “The profile specialists on the customer’s side are overwhelmingly middle-aged men who served with a military registration specialty,” says one of Kommersant’s sources. Booking, in his opinion, will spread to units, and “the loss of specialists from both the customer and the developer side of the workflow for an indefinite period will become a serious problem for the industry.”

Tatyana Isakova