Opinions & Interviews

MINSK, 29 November (BelTA) - Information security is becoming crucial for the realization of balanced interests of individuals, society and the state, Vladimir Archakov, Deputy State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus, said at the opening of the international conference on information security in Minsk on 29 November, BelTA has learned.

Vladimir Archakov noted that in recent decades the information sector has turned into a separate field of public life. Due to the novelty of emerging relations, it is vulnerable to risks, threats and challenges that spill over into all other spheres of social life. Information security is becoming a critical issue for the realization of balanced interests of individuals, society and the state,” Vladimir Archakov noted.

Thus, information security is turning into a separate area of public life. It is these new conditions of public security, the need for awareness of their essence coupled with the importance of identifying priority areas of information security that necessitate adopting new conceptual views on the status of the information sector security,” he noted.

These conceptual frameworks, according to Vladimir Archakov, should be based on social and economic interests. “Information security does not exist in isolation. It is built in keeping with Belarus’ advances on the way towards qualitatively new stages in its development. This is why the conceptual approaches to information security will be based not only on Belarus national security concept but also on strategic documents in the field of IT, digital economy, information society, science and other areas. In general, these conceptual views should become the logical continuation of the national policy on digital economy and information society,” he stressed.

Vladimir Archakov also stressed that the international information sector is turbulent. There are disturbing manifestations and also tangible sources of threats to information security. “This requires the application of such an important concept as information sovereignty. Amid the aggravating international contradictions, it is very difficult to develop generally accepted effective rules of conduct for the international community in the information space. Approaches of various countries to assessing threats in the information sector and ways to counteract them do not coincide, unfortunately, and even are polarized in some areas,” he said.

In fact, information sovereignty can be the most important target in ensuring information security. “It can mean the inalienable and exclusive rule of the state’s right to carry out an independent foreign and domestic state information policy, develop national information infrastructure, independently determine the rules of possession, use and disposal of national information resources, ensure information security. Information neutrality can become the next step in the development of information sovereignty, which will envisage a peaceful foreign information policy, respect of generally accepted rights of any state in the information sector, and non-interference in the information sector of other countries,” the deputy state secretary of the Security Council said.

According to him, the adoption of the conceptual framework of information security will bring the understanding of the challenges of the current era and the security architecture of the information sector to a higher level. It will contribute to the legislation development, strengthen the partnership of the state, business and society in the area. It will also benefit the legal awareness of the population and the country’s social and economic development.