Lyulin: "Almost half of cyberattacks against government bodies are carried out via email."

      September 24, 2025, 13:43 Politics

      The chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Evgeny Lyulin, called information protection a matter of national security, state resilience and public trust. He said this on September 24 while delivering a report at the VII Interregional Conference "Infoforum–Volga Region 2025", which is being held in Nizhny Novgorod. The theme of his speech was "Information Protection in the Legislative Bodies of the Subjects of the Russian Federation."

      According to the speaker, "Infoforum" remains a key platform for dialogue between government, business and science in the field of information security, and Nizhny Novgorod established this tradition as early as 2007. The region, he stressed, continues to strengthen its status as one of the recognized centers of digital competencies. Lyulin noted that digitalization covers all spheres of life, and with new opportunities come new threats, so information protection issues have long since gone beyond a purely technical agenda.

      Speaking about the federal agenda, the chairman of the Legislative Assembly listed several tasks without which a qualitative breakthrough is impossible: a shortage of qualified IT and information security specialists, non-competitive levels of pay for them in the civil service, and insufficient funding for import substitution of foreign solutions. He spoke of the need for targeted training of IT personnel and information security specialists with a mandatory subsequent period of work in government bodies, noting that the experience of targeted recruitment in medicine should be extended to digital professions.

      Lyulin separately addressed technological sovereignty. He said that national platforms are being successfully created in Russia, including the MAX messenger, and that this experience needs to be scaled up. He proposed developing unified national software suites for information protection and distributing them to the regions free of charge. Such an approach, the speaker is convinced, will simultaneously raise the level of security and reduce the burden on budgets.

      The speaker of the regional parliament drew attention to practices in the regions of the Volga Federal District: in the State Assembly of Mari El they have completely switched to Russian operating systems, and the legislative bodies of Tatarstan, Mordovia and Chuvashia are connected to centralized regional IT infrastructures. In his assessment, this is an effective model that should be replicated.

      At the same time, he emphasized the vulnerabilities. Antivirus protection, the regional parliament representative noted, is necessary but insufficient. "As the data show, 44% of targeted attacks come through e-mail, while means of protecting it are critically underused," Lyulin said.

      According to him, there is a widespread shortage of intrusion detection systems, data-leak prevention and incident analysis capabilities.

      A significant milestone in regulatory policy, the speaker said, was the adoption in April this year of an order by FSTEC of Russia that extended unified information protection requirements to legislative bodies. This document closed a serious legal gap. Now, Lyulin stressed, by March 2026 each legislative body must develop and implement an information security policy.

      No less important, the chairman said, is personnel training. He proposed introducing mandatory basic information security training for all civil servants, analogous to safety briefings. In his view, only a comprehensive combination of technological, personnel and regulatory measures will make it possible to build a truly reliable protection system.

      The VII Interregional Conference on Information Security in the Volga Federal District is taking place in Nizhny Novgorod on September 24–25, 2025, at the initiative of the Legislative Assembly of the Nizhny Novgorod Region and with the support of the region’s governor.

      It was previously reported that one in six residents of Nizhny Novgorod encountered local cyber threats in 2025.

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