Mikhail Grekov, a postgraduate student of the Information Security Department of Tula State University, will create an effective system for countering computer incidents with the support of the Foundation for Assistance to Innovations.

“The Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Sphere”, a non-profit organisation, held a selection of projects for the “Start-Digital Technologies-1” competition as part of the “Digital Technologies” federal project of the “Digital Economy of the Russian Federation” national programme. The competition is aimed at creating new and supporting existing small innovative enterprises seeking to develop and master the production of a new product, item, technology or service with significant commercialisation potential.

The project “Intelligent system of automated penetration testing” by Mikhail Grekov, a postgraduate student of the Information Security Department of the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science of TulSU, was supported in the direction of ‘Information Security and Data Protection’. The amount of support for R&D is four million roubles.

The project is aimed at creating a software product that will automate the process of identifying vulnerabilities in security systems, which is critical in the context of a constant increase in the number of cyberattacks, the winner said. Existing solutions, according to him, are quite dependent on the skills of specialists and are usually based on static testing scenarios.

- I am continuing the development that I started several years ago, which was supported at the “UMNIK” competition in 2022,’ said the TulSU PhD student. - The distinctive feature of our product is the use of machine learning and neural networks to generate and simulate complex attacks. The use of advanced generative methods will not only automate the testing process, but will also significantly increase adaptability to new threats and scalability to meet the needs of both large organisations and small and medium-sized businesses.

The project should result in improved security of information systems, saving time and resources for testing. The innovative solution will be an important step in ensuring reliable protection of information in the digital age, the developer is confident.

Dmitriy Litvinov