Russia has taken a serious step in import substitution in the field of IT, designed to increase the level of information security. On the basis of universities and professional education organizations, more than 80 training centers have been opened for gaining skills in working with the Russian-developed Astra Linux OS, and a portal has been created for such training online. These measures were taken to speed up and simplify the transition of law enforcement and government agencies from Windows OS to Russian software.

It is information security requirements that determine the use of the Russian OS in government and commercial organizations, while for a widespread transition to a new system it is necessary to retrain administrators. To date, Astra Linux is one of the most common domestic operating systems - since its licensing 7 years ago, almost a million copies have been sold. However, since all computers in government agencies and private companies have been equipped with Windows for a long time, most educational institutions trained users of this particular OS. The consequence of this is the insufficient number of Linux specialists in Russia, on the basis of which the Russian OS was created. That is why the development company has decided to create several training centers where future administrators could be trained, which would make it possible to switch to Astra Linux without unnecessary financial and time costs.

Universities, technical schools and training centers specializing in additional professional education and early career guidance for schoolchildren and located throughout the Russian Federation from the Crimea to the Far East have become places where such training is carried out. To date, there are already 80 such centers, and another 20 are planned to be opened this year. In particular, the program has already been implemented at Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics, Ural Federal University and Novosibirsk State Technical University.

There are many types of courses for participants, namely, there are already over 20 of such courses at the moment. Each of the courses has a target area: for advanced users, administrators or product managers. In addition, each of the areas includes training in certain specialties, which will make it possible not to waste time on obtaining special knowledge that will not come useful in each individual profession. The developer company offers courses for both ordinary users and IT professionals, each level is confirmed by a certificate. On average, educational centers graduate about 500 specialists per month. To be able to teach courses, you must first study them all, as well as the teaching methodology, and then pass the exam. Qualification needs to be confirmed every year, which is primarily due to frequent changes in the IT field.

In addition, the teaching of Astra Linux has recently been included in the curricula of some universities. For example, in the course of studying such a subject as information security, students receive theoretical and practical knowledge about how the domestic operating system works. The discipline within which the study of the Russian OS is carried out is determined by the university itself, using recommendations from the developers.

According to Andrei Ivanov, head of the Information Security Department at Novosibirsk State Technical University, today import substitution is taking place in all IT areas. He claims that future specialists will have to deal with Russian operating systems – to use, configure, certify them, etc. The university wants to produce personnel ready to work with the new IT reality, and that is why practical training is given increased attention. A. Ivanov also notes that training in working with the Russian OS is carried out both at the level of higher education and at the level of additional professional education, i.e., at advanced training courses.

In addition, educational institutions actively use the training manual, which was released by the developer company and received the recommendation for use by the Federal Educational and Methodological Association for “Information Security”.

Associate Member of the Academy of Cryptography of the Russian Federation, Professor Petr Devyanin, claims that the growing popularity of this system is due to the high-quality implementation of data security mechanisms. Since the OS access control mechanism is based on a formal model, the security conditions in which are strictly substantiated and verified by mathematical methods. It combines the most popular current data access control practices.

Source: Izvestia

All models of SILA client devices can be pre-installed with Astra Linux OS