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Weekly review of events in Azerbaijan's ICT sector

ICT Materials 27 December 2020 07:01 (UTC +04:00)
Weekly review of events in Azerbaijan's ICT sector

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec. 27

By Sadraddin Aghjayev - Trend:

Both the pandemic and the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh war showed the Azerbaijani society the importance of the sphere of cybersecurity, Rashad Amirjanov, expert, technical director of PASHA Bank, told Trend.

According to Amirjanov, society must understand where threats come from and what solutions are most effective in combating them. "Although today most organizations have automated security systems, it’s important to conduct training with personnel in the cybersecurity sector. The human factor in the fight against cyber threats and their prevention plays an important role," he said.

A bigger number of cyber threats are predicted to occur in the near future, and education in the field of ICT can help in the prevention of their spread, added the expert.

Besides, according to Shafi Rasulov, Software Engineer at Google, in Azerbaijan, as in a number of other countries, the development of Public Cloud (intended for free use by the general public) has been practically reduced to zero.

He added that the public cloud, despite being provided both for free and with several technical security and cybersecurity capabilities, still requires data storage skills from the user.

According to Azerbaijani AzCLOUD company’s expert Farrukh Farajullayev, 96 percent of companies don’t back up data, and 93 percent of the companies lost their data and failed to return it for 10 or more days declare bankruptcy.

As a result of the data loss, the world's companies suffered damages of $3.62 million in 2017, $3.86 million in 2018, and $3.92 million in 2019.

Along with economic damages, a company may lose the trust of its customers.

"In 51 percent of cases, the company may lose the trust of its customers, in 44 percent - damage will be suffered by the company's brand, in 33 percent - employees of the company will also cease to trust the stability of the company, in 21 percent - the value of the company's shares may decrease and only in 16 percent of cases the company can be deprived of accreditation or its license," added Farajullayev.

At the same time, as Vusal Khalilov, Head of the PASHA Bank Engineering Department, pointed out, the cyber threat sector is moving forward, which is why our IT threat response team works on the principle: to prevent threats, it’s necessary to stay ahead of them.

In one of his interviews Tahir Ismayilov, Director of Strategic Cooperation in Russia and the CIS of the GSM Association, positively assessed the development of 5G technology in Azerbaijan.

"Testing of the 5G standard in Baku by Azercell mobile operator certainly has a positive effect on the prospects for the development of technology in Azerbaijan," Ismayilov noted. "The 5G has great potential for the country's economy, industrial sectors, the development of unmanned vehicles and smart cities, and the implementation of digitalization programs in Azerbaijan."

Another notable event of this week was the signing of a memorandum of cooperation in the field of entrepreneurship development and an agreement on joint activity was signed between the Innovation Agency under the Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies and the US 500 Startups venture fund and startup accelerator.

The founder of 500 Startups Christine Tsai said that two Azerbaijani startups are currently are participating in the acceleration program and their number will increase in the future.

Chairman of the board of the Innovation Agency Tural Karimli said that the first joint acceleration program planned to be implemented with an international company will be the biggest in Azerbaijan and will arouse great interest among international companies operating in Azerbaijan.

Besides, this week it was reported about launching BotBox and Bankoff startup projects in Azerbaijan.

According to the technical manager of the projects Elmir Aliyev, the possibilities of automating business communication are aimed not only at the domestic market of Azerbaijan but also at the region as a whole.

"Today, the possibilities of our project are provided to the banking and insurance sectors of Azerbaijan. In the future, this circle will be expanded, again in the direction of B2B," said Aliyev.

Besides, he noted that the Bankoff project will soon be integrated into the markets of Kazakhstan and Turkey.

"Payment cards under the Bankoff brand are now available for the Azerbaijani citizens. The banking system itself was registered in the US, but it allows conduct banking operations in our country," the manager also pointed out.

Aliyev added that all operations, including balance, payment history, receipt, and transfer of funds, are carried out through BankoffBot on the WhatsApp platform.

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