Cybersecurity Policy of Modern Education

Khamidullin Ruslan Sibagatullovich PhD in Law Head of the Department of Operational Investigative Activities of Internal Affairs Bodies, Ural Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia 620072, Russia, Sverdlovskaya oblast', g. Ekaterinburg, ul. Syromolotova, 7, kv. 11 sledgsugu@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Chub Dmitrii Sergeevich Postgraduate, Department of Operational Investigative Activity of Internal Affairs Bodies, Ural Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia 66 Korepina str., Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk region, 620057, Russia dima.chub2000@mail.ru

In the process of cultural and social development, society has been steadily striving for informatization. From generation to generation, the ways of transmitting and storing information have been improved. And currently, the entire data flow passes through the global Internet, with the advent of which the history of cybercrime began.

Despite its relatively recent appearance, this topic has been actively considered by such researchers as: A.G. Asmolov, Yu.N. Biryukova, A.G. Kovaleva, I.V. Chelysheva.

Currently, scientific and technological progress is so closely related to humans that most of the population spends a significant part of their time in an electronic environment: they store their money, assets, personal data and other important information about themselves in it. The close connection of the subject with the life of a modern and future person determines its social significance. 

"The Internet has already penetrated into all spheres of our life, and, by and large, it must still obey not just laws, formal legal rules, but also the moral laws of the society in which we live. Otherwise, this society will be destroyed from within," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in March 2021 at a meeting with participants of the all-Russian action of mutual assistance "We are Together" ^[17].

To assess the growth of the integration of the digital environment into our lives, let's look at statistical data. As of January 2022, the total population of Russia was 145.9 million people, of which 75.2% live in cities, and 24.8% in rural areas ^[22]. As we know, the frequency of human-technology interaction in cities is much higher than in rural areas. 

According to the report on the state of the digital sphere GlobalDigital 2022, as of January 2022, there are 129.8 million Internet users in Russia. 89% of the total population use the Internet ^[32]. According to Kepios, in 2021 the number of Internet users in Russia increased by 5.8 million (+4.7%). The average Russian citizen spends about 7 hours and 5 minutes a day on the Internet and 46.7% of this time on mobile devices. 106 million people or 72.7% of the total population have become users of social networks. In 2021, the number of social network users in Russia increased by 7 million (+7.1%) ^[22].

These figures give an understanding of the volume of introduction and growth of digital technologies, but to understand what people are actually doing on the Internet, we need to delve deeper into the data. The main reason for the use of the Internet by Russian Internet users is the search for information. 84.3% of users from Russia aged 16 to 64 go online for exactly this purpose. In second place is communication with relatives and friends (66.4%), and 66.1% of Russian residents follow the news online ^[15].

It can be concluded that the process of filling our lives with information technologies is steadily growing. Technologies simplify the life of a modern person in many ways: you do not need to constantly carry a heavy wallet, it is enough to use contactless payment or go to an organization and fill out whole mountains of documents, repeating the same data about yourself several times, but simply register on the appropriate website and compile them remotely.

Cases are becoming more frequent when, as a result of working with the information environment, our data is obtained and used by cybercriminals and fraudsters for selfish purposes. In addition, modern technologies are used for crimes that infringe on the sexual integrity of minors, the mental health of citizens, encroach on the property status of the state, legal entities and individuals, may be of a terrorist or extremist nature, which in turn undermines the national security of the country as a whole.

According to statistics, the number of cybercrimes in Russia has increased 11 times in 5 years, to over 510.4 thousand cases, that is, by 94.6% ^[28].

Since the beginning of 2022, the amount of damage from IT crimes in Russia has amounted to 65 billion rubles (TASS reports with reference to the words of the Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev's Russia), which exceeded the data of 2021 by 20% ^[27]. Do not ignore the fact that most crimes are committed by foreign countries. Given the current geopolitical situation, the protection of the population from foreign cybercriminals is more relevant than ever and at the same time has become much more complicated.

The rapid integration of technology into everyday life increases the threat of cyber attacks by scammers, who increasingly use teenagers to commit their actions. For example, they offer to distribute malware for a certain reward.

The growth of cybercrime is an urgent problem today, because every fourth crime in Russia occurs with the help of information technology or in cyberspace. And law enforcement agencies do not have time to cope with the growing volumes of such crimes. In the third quarter of 2022 alone, hackers hacked 22.3 million Russian accounts ^[19]. Attacks on key government management systems (electronic government, websites of government agencies), economic blockade (large-scale shutdown of payment systems, booking systems), hardware attacks on personal computers, smartphones of citizens and organizations, attacks on household objects that are controlled using information and communication technologies, and critical infrastructure – all these are types of threats the state, and consequently, the threat to national security ^[22].

Cybercrime is one of the most serious threats to modern people and organizations. As cybersecurity technologies evolve, attackers are only complicating their attacks by using new data. Therefore, every industry needs cybersecurity experts to stop hackers in their tracks and protect the company's confidential data. Due to such high demand, it is expected that the number of jobs for cybersecurity specialists will grow by 33% from 2020 to 2030 ^[24].

At the International Congress on Cybersecurity in Moscow (2019), Vladimir Putin announced a list of measures for the cyber defense of the country that the government intends to take ^[14]. The list includes international cooperation, the creation of a system for exchanging information about cyber attacks, the use of domestic software and the training of qualified personnel.

Traditional approaches to the investigation of crimes do not allow us to fully resist this qualitatively new type of threats. A prerequisite for successful work in this direction is an understanding by law enforcement officers of the specifics of the functioning of the cybersphere, its cross-border nature, the ability to work in the information environment, interact with representatives of IT companies and other specialists, know how and where to look for evidence, how to fix it. And, of course, competently build a dialogue with participants in the criminal process, interrogate witnesses, suspects and accused of committing such crimes.

Andrey Kovalev, head of the Main Department for Combating Cybercrime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus, noted that cybercrime is developing. And law enforcement agencies have no right to lag behind: "Criminals have become more literate, they keep up with the times, use certain gadgets, technologies. We at least have to meet them. And ideally, they should be one step ahead and anticipate this or that criminal act that may occur taking into account the same geopolitical situation and everything that is happening in the world" ^[10].

In accordance with Presidential Decree No. 688 of September 30, 2022, the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Organization of the Fight against the Illegal Use of Information and Communication Technologies (UBK) was created ^[3].

Among the main tasks of the department: prevention, detection, suppression and disclosure of crimes and other offenses in the field of IT technologies, as well as coordination of these activities in the Ministry's system. The unit will also analyze data contained in information and telecommunications networks in order to identify prohibited content and counter crime. The Department cooperates with the FSB, government agencies, institutions of the financial and credit system, organizations of the information and communication sphere, other participants in information exchange, including aggregators of big data.

On the official Internet resource of the Security Council of the Russian Federation after the meeting devoted to the neutralization of internal threats to national security (January 27, 2022), it is noted: "Representatives of the scientific community spoke out for the need to include elements of information security in school educational programs and in the educational process of federal and national universities of the country."

Currently, much attention is paid to this problem, but general scientific approaches have not yet been formed, and publications are more of a research nature. Some of the processes are subject to the general laws of the development of organizations, this aspect is considered in scientific works and research quite fully ^[5;18]. Representatives of higher education, and, in particular, the Higher School of Economics, study these processes more deeply. A.Y. Uvarov believes that digital transformation is a natural component of the current processes of education development, and identifies three groups of scenarios ^[26]. For each scenario, the introduction of digital technologies plays an important role, but technological solutions can be completely different. The analysis of modern trends has shown that the digital transformation of education is determined by the dominant of further development ^[25]. M.A. Selivanova in her research focuses on the role of digital learning platforms. Due to the presence of a request in society to streamline approaches to the digital transformation of educational organizations, methodological recommendations are being developed, which collect regulatory and legislative documents, systematize the main definitions and requirements, and provide models, technologies and tools ^[31].

The education system being reformed under the processes of digitalization of society and the economy should create conditions to assist citizens in the formation of digital competencies, to achieve mass digital literacy and the possibility of personalizing the educational trajectory in the form of an individual educational trajectory of competence formation ^[11].

To solve these problems, a number of projects are being implemented, and by 2024 it is expected to create an education system that could identify talented young people, especially in the IT field, provide training of highly qualified personnel in demand in the conditions of Industry 4.0, as well as large-scale implementation of retraining and advanced training programs in narrower professional fields, taking into account the achievements of digitalization. Within the framework of this direction, it is also important that the construction of any digital infrastructure is very closely interrelated with activities based on an innovative approach ^[11].

In the current conditions, the envisaged processes of digital transformation of the industry act as a necessary foundation for solving the tasks assigned to the system of science and education.

 The processes of digital transformation are widely represented in the strategy of digital transformation of science and higher education, adopted by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation "On approval of the strategic direction in the field of digital transformation of science and higher education" dated December 21, 2021 No. 3759-R.

According to the strategy, students should learn the basics of cybersecurity in the lessons of housing and technology. In agreement with the Ministry of Education, almost half of the curriculum of the OBZH subject will be devoted to the study of the basics of Internet security. Technology lessons will teach students the skills of safe use of various digital services. The Ministry of Finance believes that computer science classes are not intended for this, since they teach information technologies and the principles of their application ^[19].

From 2022, special two-year programming courses will be available remotely to students of grades 8-11. Additional free professional programming training will help students decide on their future profession and form skills that are in demand in the digital economy ^[29].

In many universities of the country, a new discipline has been introduced, which is called "Cybersecurity". These innovations should help our citizens cope with the threats that arise when working with the electronic environment.

The most common problems that a user of an electronic environment may encounter are fake websites on the Internet: false shops that take payment, but do not deliver goods; pages that unreasonably require passport data, bank card data, and many others. Not everyone will be able to distinguish the original site from the scammers' site without having certain knowledge in this area, and the scammers' pages appear on the Internet just like hydra – one site is closed, two new ones appear in its place.

Of course, there are certain algorithms of actions and special people who are engaged in the search and closure of malicious electronic pages. These are mostly clone sites. Clone sites are a way of phishing fraud. Phishing (fishing) is an illegal act by which fraudsters try to force a person to tell them confidential information.

Verifying the authenticity of a website is more of a creative process than an exact plan of action. None of the proposed methods can absolutely guarantee the authenticity of the resource, but if used together, checking the site for fraud will be more successful. Here is an approximate procedure:

1.     Check the domain: scammers register domains that are as similar as possible to the original resource: they can insert a symbol or a number between words (kino0poisk.ru ), add an additional letter or replace the letter (muz i ika.ru ), change the domain zone (muzika.site).

2.     Check if there is SSL: at the beginning of the address bar, you can see one of 2 types of protocols: http:// or https://. If you see http://, it means that the site does not have an SSL certificate installed, which verifies the authenticity of the site and protects user data from being intercepted by fraudsters. However, even if you see https://, you should not relax. There are some types of SSL that are not difficult to obtain. Scammers understand that even ordinary users often know about the dangers of the http protocol, and browsers have begun to warn users with large messages or red marks. Scammers spend money and time installing at least a simple certificate. Therefore, the user needs to click on the lock icon next to the URL: there will be information about the certificate and about the certification center (CA) that issued it.

3.     Check the domain registration data: go to the Whois service, enter the domain name and click "Check" (how long the domain has been used, registered to an individual or legal entity and whether it corresponds to the type of site. For example, a large brand is indicated on the site, and an individual is indicated in Whois).

4.     To view the content on the site: it is unprofitable for scammers to create a full-fledged web resource with many pages. They create just a couple of pages with products, a shopping cart and a layout of a form for payment.

5.     Pay attention to payment systems: fraudsters do not use payment systems that work with bank cards. Most often, they offer to use a QIWI wallet for payment. Therefore, if when paying for a product or service you are sent only to a QIWI wallet, you should think about it.

6. Contact the services to check the security of web resources. For example, Google has such a service in the VirusTotal service. Modern antiviruses are able to track phishing sites. For example, since 2019, Avast antivirus has such a feature.

7.     See what the site looked like some time ago, check the snapshots. A snapshot is a snapshot of the site. That is, the system periodically bypasses resources, saves their appearance and loads this data into a large archive. On the web.archive website.org you can enter the URL and see what it looked like, for example, a month ago. Fraud sites are often complained about, so they constantly have to move. If a web resource does not exist for a long time or the content on it is constantly changing (then one online store, then another), perhaps this site is unfair.

If you have become a victim of a fraudster or were able to recognize him before the theft, help other users not to fall for the bait. To do this, contact the owners of this web resource and inform them about the clone site. They, for their part, will be able to contact the hosting provider and demand that the malicious site be removed. You can also report the violation to search engines. Google has created a form to report sites.

Since December 1, 2021, fraudulent websites have been blocked in Russia on the initiative of the Bank of Russia out of court for several days, according to federal law No. 250-FZ of July 1, 2021. Previously, this procedure could take months. Under the new mechanism, the Bank of Russia will transfer lists of fraudulent Internet resources to the Prosecutor General's Office, which has the authority to send instructions on their extrajudicial blocking to Roskomnadzor. Such an algorithm of interaction will allow in a short time to restrict the access of citizens to the sites of financial pyramids and other fraudulent sites that operate on the Internet under the guise of financial organizations. The adopted law also gives the regulator the right to apply to the court to restrict access to resources that distribute malicious software.

"The new law will reduce the financial losses of our citizens from the actions of intruders. Now criminals manage to deceive a lot of people before access to the fraudulent site is closed. This practice, in particular, is typical for financial pyramids. The adoption of the law will make it possible to change the situation," said German Zubarev, Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia ^[16].

Online scammers became especially active during the COVID-19 pandemic, as citizens preferred to receive services and services mainly in a remote format. In the first quarter of 2021, 124 illegal forex dealers, 85 financial pyramids and 144 illegal creditors were identified. In general, about 45% of illegal participants in the financial market and financial pyramids operate on the Internet ^[16].

But, be that as it may, it is currently not possible to completely defeat this ailment. And what if the number of people who are able to determine the authenticity of Internet pages and who know the algorithms of actions to shut down fraudulent sites increases in number to an entire country? When schoolchildren and students will be able to find fake and malicious websites during their studies and help the authorized bodies in their elimination.

Having conducted a study of this topic, we propose to improve the curriculum of schoolchildren in such a way that it teaches the skills of distinguishing safe and non-safe Internet pages, and the curriculum of students so that they can distinguish whether this site is additionally prohibited or not and whether it complies with the rules of work in the field in which the student receives education. For example, representatives of legal specialties can determine whether the sale of goods located on the site in Russia is allowed. And also, in the process of such training, to provide an educational organization with an opportunity for students to report such sites to a special employee and encourage students to do so.  

In order to achieve the efficiency of this proposal, it is necessary to achieve the improvement of the material and technical base in educational organizations, which will meet the conditions of the new training standards.

It should be noted that a program to equip institutions with new technologies is already underway. But in many educational institutions of our country, the equipment of modern technical devices used in the learning process leaves much to be desired. In addition, educational institutions that have a large number of modern technical means often do not use them in the learning process.

To achieve the goal, additions to the textbooks or their complete revision are necessary. Schoolchildren and students should have well-developed, up-to-date information for their learning process. It is also necessary to train teachers who are able to competently explain to students all aspects of actions to detect and eliminate malware and fraudulent sites. In addition, the duties of the teacher teaching the relevant subject should include the duties of receiving and verifying information from students about malicious sites and programs. As a result, analyzing the information received, they will be able to provide it to law enforcement agencies for further verification. Which, in turn, also requires the establishment of interaction between law enforcement agencies and the education sector in this direction.

Complementing the innovations, it is also worth noting the need to stimulate students. There should be a system of ways and methods of encouraging citizens, depending on the work done.  

Thus, the population will be able to master the basic skills of safe work with Internet resources in a more substantive way, increase their cyber literacy, help society and the state, develop a sense of civic duty.

On average, every day we view more than two new pages in information resources, increasingly getting to illegal ones. Their growth directly threatens the national security of the country, which is already carrying out a number of effective countermeasures to combat cybercrime. But with the establishment of the previously mentioned method of interaction between educational organizations and the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, our country will be able to increase its security against cybercrime, the speed of detection and disclosure of crimes related to information systems. This will once again prove to the whole world the high level of education and security of our country.