Dr. Richard Browne:

There are essentially two distinct questions in there. One is on the incidents we are seeing or that are being reported in the media and the second is on our assessment of the links between organised crime in Russia and the Russian state.

On the first, it is very important to note that there has been a very considerable amount of attention on cybersecurity in many different companies, entities and Departments for a long time. Most of that has been very helpful and from time to time that spills over into paranoia, which is a function of what we do. One finds that issues are being reported as major incidents when in fact they may be nothing. That is just accidents and these things happen. It is useful to have a balanced perspective as to the risks here and not to be calling everything a wolf because the day will come when you have a wolf, and then no one will believe you.

Second, there is the much more vexed question on the links between Russian organised crime and the Russian state. The honest answer, and it will be the same answer from many European governments and many private cybersecurity firms, is that no one has been able to pin a direct link there in any material sense. There are many rumours and much supposition and there is a fairly obvious question as to how could they not know, but there has been very little by way of firm links proven by anybody between the Russian state and individual threat actor groups. It is, of course, entirely possible that this might be some kind of symbiotic relationship but right now, and on paper, there is no material proof of that.