Rosatom will prohibit the use of iPhone for official tasks

Following the Rostec Group, Rosatom is abandoning smartphones and the American Apple. The corporation intends to stop working with the iOS operating system (OS) by the end of the year and develop service IT systems on alternative mobile platforms. According to Kommersant, the company will transfer employees to Android, but experts emphasize that this OS can also pose a threat, and the level of security depends not only on the OS, but also on the hardware component of the smartphone.

The Rosatom state corporation has begun to transfer employees using an iPhone to devices based on the Android OS, three sources in the IT market told Kommersant. Rosatom explained to Kommersant that the abandonment of iOS is necessary to “achieve technological independence and additional stability of the information infrastructure.” The corporation plans to stop using corporate applications on devices based on iOS by the end of the year: “We intend to focus on the development of utility software products on alternative operating systems.”

In July, it became known that Apple smartphones were banned for use in Rostec; the state corporation reported that they were transferring employees to their own AYYA smartphones. “Employees who have used Apple equipment have certain inconveniences,” Rostec admits. “They have to get used to new devices and interfaces. But the problem is not widespread, not critical and temporary.” The state corporation believes that abandoning Apple has increased its cybersecurity. There was a similar ban introduced for the use of iPhone in the public sector (ministries and departments), in particular in the Ministry of Digital Development.

Employees of state corporations can store quite critical information on their devices, including data on developments, so abandoning the iPhone “looks logical,” says CorpSoft24 lead engineer Mikhail Sergeev. Kaspersky Lab adds that iOS is a very closed system that does not allow additional technical protection or monitoring tools to be installed on devices. “This increases the risk of attackers exploiting vulnerabilities that can be found in the OS,” explains Dmitry Galov, head of the Russian research center at Kaspersky Lab. In his opinion, switching to alternative operating systems “at a minimum will increase the chances of detecting potential incidents.”

However, Mr. Sergeev emphasizes, security can really be improved “only by using our own developments, operating systems certified by FSTEC/FSB, while Android is not such and also poses a threat.”

A number of mobile operating systems are being developed in Russia: Aurora (Rostelecom), Red OS (Red Soft), Rosa (NTC IT ROSA LLC, owned by Leonid Reiman’s Alternative Capital LLC), Astra Linux ( “Rusbitech-Astra”). According to Kommersant, a number of government agencies are interested in the transition to Aurora, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Russian Post and Russian Railways. Back in the fall of 2022, Rostelecom developed a development strategy for Aurora, within the framework of which it was planned, together with partners, to release a line of smartphones and tablets, including consumer ones, by 2030 (see Kommersant of October 27, 2022).

Kommersant’s interlocutor in the IT market believes that in the current conditions, state-owned companies could take the path of developing an OS on open source code: “take the original AOSP (Android Open Source Project) without modifications and modify it with security systems, including some of them writing it yourself.” This way, you can get more control over two of the three components of the smartphone, the Kommersant source explains – the operating system and applications, but “the hardware still remains uncontrolled, and this can reduce protection efforts to zero.”

Tatiana Isakova