6 July 2021, Moscow — Officials from the Central Bank of Russia, Mastercard and Visa will meet at the upcoming Cyber Polygon 2021 online training session on 9 July to discuss the secure development of digital currencies.

The session is titled ’New world — new currency. How to make the financial system resilient as digital currencies proliferate’. The panelists include Alexei Zabotkin, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia, Mark Barnett, President of Mastercard Europe, and Matthew Dill, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Ventures, Senior Vice President of Visa. The session will be moderated by Matthew Blake, Head of Financial and Monetary Initiatives, World Economic Forum.

The speakers will shed light on the risks posed by the development of digital currencies, whether it can affect the sustainability of financial institutions, and how to protect the financial system from the threats that inevitably come with technological advances.

’El Salvador has declared bitcoin a legal tender, the Bank of Russia and businesses are developing their own cryptocurrencies, and payment systems are already starting to accept them as legitimate payments. This goes to show that the question of digital currencies is getting more and more relevant with each day. That is why we have decided to cover this topic in a dedicated session at Cyber Polygon 2021, where we will discuss the prospects of such innovations and ways to protect against the risks they bring’, said the organizers of the event at BI.ZONE.

The discussion is included in the online training, which will be live streamed on 9 July at 13:40 UTC+3. It is possible to connect to the stream from the Cyber Polygon homepage; prior registration is not required.

The event is organised by BI.ZONE, an expert in strategic management of digital risks (part of the Sber Ecosystem), with the support of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Centre for Cybersecurity and INTERPOL. The training is an annual event with 2021 being its third time in session.

In addition to the online stream, Cyber Polygon 2021 will also feature a training course for technical specialists, with 200 teams from 48 countries registered to participate. The goal of the training exercise is to engage the participating teams in a response to a targeted supply chain attack in the corporate ecosystem.