Russia forces Selectel & Rostelecom to play 'Encryption Tag'

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development has drafted a new order that forces any IT system serving government agencies to implement mandatory cryptographic protection. The scope of this regulation has been massively expanded, moving beyond just official government systems to now include any private infrastructure provider hosting government data.

A total of 478 companies, including industry giants like Selectel, Rostelecom, DataPro, and IXcellerate, are now effectively being put on the hook for these security requirements. It is a bold move that assumes these providers have been living in a digital wild west until the government decided to hand them a rulebook for basic safety.

While officials claim this is a minor update that market players already support, it is effectively a bureaucratic net cast wide to ensure every byte of data passing through these facilities can be technically decrypted or controlled. It is a charmingly transparent attempt to ensure that if a system holds state data, it is wearing the right state-approved goggles.

This shift demonstrates a desperate pivot toward total information control under the guise of security. Whether this actually keeps hackers out or just gives the state a master key to every private server rack remains the real question for the comments section.