BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb.28
By Sadraddin Aghjayev - Trend:
The participation of foreign companies in the restoration of the liberated territories of Azerbaijan, as well as in the implementation of ‘smart’ projects, is inevitable, Coordinator of the Azerbaijan Innovation Agency, Elman Karimli, said in this week’s interview with Trend.
According to Karimli, most of the companies that will be involved in the implementation of ‘smart’ projects are companies which are already present in the local market of Azerbaijan.
"The attraction of companies, both local and foreign, to the digitalization of projects will be carried out on the basis of a tender. Work is already underway in this direction," he added.
The Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan, together with the relevant state structures, is holding consultations on the use of ‘smart’ services in the territories of Azerbaijan liberated from the Armenian occupation, a source in the ministry said.
"Currently, a number of options for connecting smart services equipment to a central platform can be provided through mobile and fixed-line operators. These capabilities can be increased in accordance with the requirements of the planned ‘smart’ services," noted the source.
Along with the foregoing, the ministry is developing a ‘smart city’ strategy that reflects the technical and technological architecture of its construction, the relevant government agencies that should be involved in the further development and operation of the services of this project.
Besides, the ministry said that Azerbaijan’s Azerpost LLC has been integrated into the system of instant payments since November 2020, and its clients have the opportunity to use this type of transaction with accounts.
"The next stage in this project will be the integration into the payment system via QR codes. At the moment, test work is underway at specially designated testing instances and in the financial ecosystem itself. At the same time, the issue of implementing payments for e-commerce through this system is being discussed," noted the ministry.
Speaking about postal forwarding, the ministry said that in order to reduce the time of forwarding export mail shipments, it applies alternative shipping options.
"We use multimodal delivery methods that combine land and air transportation. Alternative delivery methods may lead to longer delivery times due to restrictions on the postal services of recipient countries during the pandemic," added the ministry.
The source also noted that over the past year, memorandums of cooperation were signed between Azerbaijan and innovation centers from the US, Hungary and Turkey.
In order to stimulate startups and attract investments for them, 25 amendments to seven Azerbaijani legislative acts were prepared and proposed, stressed the source.
The Ministry is gradually carrying out the necessary work to ensure the stability and quality of Internet connections in the districts of Azerbaijan. Measures are also being taken by the ministry to increase the existing capacity and create a linear network in order to provide telecommunication services to new houses and expanding territories in villages and towns where there is a communication network, as well as new settlements.
"Along with this, in order to increase the range and volume of services provided under the current network modernization project, the existing copper cable lines are being replaced with fiber-optic ones, the GPON technology (Gigabyte Passive Optical Network) is being introduced," further said the ministry.
This week Mushvig Mammadov, representative of Kaspersky Lab in Azerbaijan, noted that in the world, there is a tendency for a decline in number of cyber attacks, which is also typical for Azerbaijan.
"The number of massive threats is declining, while the number of unique malicious programs is growing," Mammadov said. "The techniques of attackers are becoming more sophisticated and less noticeable. This is clearly seen in the situation with ransomware."
"About three years ago, such malware massively attacked, often targeting private users. However, last year some organizations suffered from ransomware, attacks became targeted. Such threats are more difficult to detect. That is why cybersecurity is becoming more relevant than ever," he added.
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