On September 10, 2026, a two-day conference CYBER STEPPE 2026, organized by MSSP Global as part of the Republican Cybersecurity Month, opened at the Alem.ai International Center for Artificial Intelligence in Astana. Representatives of government, business, the banking sector, technology companies and the information security community are discussing how to make safe behavior in the digital environment an everyday norm.
The event is supported by the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Opening the conference, Vice Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan Doszhan Musaliev noted that this year the Digital Code and the Law “On Cybersecurity” came into force in Kazakhstan, and standards in the field of personal data protection were improved. In addition, the Labor Code for the first time establishes the responsibilities of employers and employees in the field of cybersecurity and cyberculture.
According to him, the Month of Cyber Culture is designed to help citizens recognize Internet fraud and cyber threats, treat personal data more responsibly and use digital services more safely.
From compliance to cyber resilience
One of the central topics of the first day was the session “Cyber Defense Culture: From Compliance to Resilience.” Representatives of the Information Security Committee of the MIICR, the Ministry of National Economy, CenterCredit Bank, Freedom Holding and Halyk Bank take part in it. The moderator is MSSP Global CEO Dauren Salipov.
Participants discuss why compliance with regulatory requirements and modern security tools are not enough to ensure real security for an organization.
Modern cyber attacks are developing quickly, and the consequences of one incident can affect not only the information security department, but also the business processes of the entire company. At the same time, people remain one of the most vulnerable elements: an employee can open a malicious email, follow a phishing link, or transfer data to attackers.
Therefore, cyberculture is considered as a task not only for information security specialists, but also for the organization’s management. During the session, experts discuss how to measure the maturity of cyber culture, what role the top officials of companies should play in its formation, and how to correlate investments in technology with investments in employee training.
A separate issue is the transition from compliance, that is, formal compliance with established requirements, to resilience—the organization’s ability to withstand attacks, effectively respond to incidents and recover from them.
Real traffic of critical infrastructure showed mail vulnerability
A practical example of this problem at the conference was the case presented by tLab Technologies.
For 1.5 months of analysis of real mail traffic of the system operator of the energy system of Kazakhstan, 350 thousand messages were processed. At the same time, 152 malicious attachments passed through the standard email gateway and reached users. We are talking about combat traffic of a critical object
