Russian officials boasted on Friday that Moscow has avoided the consequences of global upheavals computer systems because they are more self-sufficient after years of Western sanctions, although some experts say Russian systems may still be vulnerable.

Microsoft and other IT companies have suspended sales of new products in Russia and are reducing their operations in accordance with sanctions imposed by the war in Ukrainewhich Moscow calls a special military operation.

Crowdstrikean American cybersecurity company whose widely used Falcon Sensor software led to the crash of Microsoft Windowshad no known clients in Russia. The Russian market is dominated by local cybersecurity companies such as Kaspersky Lab.

“CrowdStrike has not provided any services in Russia since February 2022”Mikhail Klimarev from the non-governmental Internet Defense Society reported this to Reuters.

The Kremlin, as well as companies from state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom, which operates all of Russia’s nuclear power plants, major lenders and airlines, have not reported any disruptions amid disruptions that have hit international companies around the world.

“The situation once again highlights the importance of replacing foreign software,” the Russian Ministry of Digital Development stated.

Russian financial and currency markets They also worked without problems.

“Everyone has been preparing for some time for the possibility of being cut off from Microsoft due to sanctions. This incident is proof of how well we prepared. So far, everything is going well and overall there is no panic in the market,” a currency trader, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Russia’s second-largest lender, VTB, has announced plans to increase the share of domestic software to 95% by the end of this year, up from 85% currently. The bank said it had invested 50 billion rubles ($571.46 million) this year alone to phase out foreign software.

However, Eldar Murtazin, an IT expert, said the risks of under-testing new software updates are universal and that Russian software is not necessarily immune to future bugs like the one that affected CrowdStrike.

“Such problems can affect any software, Russian or foreign, if there is no adequate control over new versions. “If such a failure had occurred three or four years ago, several Russian companies would have suffered,” Murtazin told Reuters.

Reuters