Securing space: Kaspersky to Give Cosmonauts Cybersecurity Training

Kaspersky is proud to announce its new partnership with the Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center – the location in Star City where cosmonauts from all over the world prepare to go to space. As part of this collaboration, the company will hold special training for cosmonauts, as well as IT specialists at the center, to educate them on the current cybersecurity landscape.

Space development and exploration is actively driven by advanced technology and it is important that the industry remains protected. Today, when cyberattack in normal daily life can be costly and lead to extreme consequences, similar threats could be even more devastating in the space industry. Kaspersky organizes special cybersecurity training, during which world-leading security experts of the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) introduce current and future cosmonauts, and industry professionals, to the essential basics of cybersecurity. Here they reinforce how they can explore space safely. During this training, the audience learns about a wide range of topics, including the different types of cyberthreats existing in the space industry, what cybercriminals are targeting, as well as various methods of cyberattacks.

The Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center, a Roscosmos enterprise, located in Star City, Russia, is a worldwide training facility, collaborating with space agencies from different countries such as NASA (USA), CSA (Canada), ESA (Europe) JAXA (Japan) and others. It is in the center that cosmonauts complete their training and pass their most important final pre-flight exams before going to the international space stating. 

“We’re proud to support this center, founded at the time of the very beginning of space exploration, and which now trains astronauts from all over the world. It’s very exciting for us to be involved in developing scientific progress – the restless movement forward (and upward and outward!) of humanity,” said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky. “Back in 2012, I visited the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center for an excursion and to learn about the unique tests that astronauts undergo there to ready them for space travel. It is indeed an extraordinary – and vital – institution in the field of human space exploration.”

The Gagarin Center has been supporting manned space exploration for almost 60 years. It was at the forefront of the world’s first human space flight, and overseen other achievements ever since – such as the first woman-cosmonaut flight, the first spacewalk and regular flights onboard of space stations. The center organizes the selection, training and medical examination of cosmonauts, with a unique infrastructure that is made up of various simulators. These simulators include the center’s centrifuge and it is among one of the toughest to test cosmonauts’ reactions and their tolerance of increased acceleration, which are above the levels experienced in Earth's gravity. 

“We are very pleased to have established a business partnership with a recognized leader in the area of information security,” emphasized Pavel Vlasov, head of the Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center. “We are united by uniqueness, striving to be the first and the best. Although we work in various fields, we have shared values based on a passion for own business, innovations and a desire to achieve set goals. I am sure that the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center will be able to reach new horizons in providing manned space programmes with the support of an international company such as Kaspersky.”

As a future looking company, Kaspersky has been continuously supporting initiatives related to science and space exploration. Thus, since 2016 the company has been supporting Starmus – an international festival that combines science, art and music, bringing together prominent scientists, top artists and legendary space explorers with the aim to inspire and educate the next generation of great minds. The fifth edition of Starmus is currently being held at the ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, until June 29, 2019. Kaspersky, together with Monocle magazine, is hosting podcast series dedicated to the future of space and cybersecurity.