The Interior Ministry has announced a tender for a system to detect and prevent hacker attacks with a price tag of almost 40 million rubles ($1.3 million).
The ministry's special equipment and communications department announced the tender Monday, with the project's completion date set for November, RIA-Novosti reported.
The Interior Ministry's anti-hacking project, apparently inspired by President Vladimir Putin's earlier calls to improve the country's anti-hacking defenses, will include a subsystem for interaction with the Federal Security Service to transmit statistics and a subsystem to monitor computer attacks.
The system must also be able to detect the source of the attack and its target in order to protect important data.
Prospective participants have until May 13 to submit their applications for funding.
As recently as February, Putin instructed the FSB to set up a system to tackle viruses targeting government agencies and scientific research institutes. He warned that the defense industry and crucial political and economic information were at risk from sophisticated malware like the Red October virus, which was capable of transmitting information from mobile devices.
"We need the most modern methods for organizing counter-espionage activity, including the protection of secret information," Putin said.
In February, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council, said the volume of cyber attacks on state websites was increasing, with up to 10,000 attacks on the webpages of the president, the State Duma and the Federation Council each day.
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