OREANDA-NEWS  By the end of March, employees of the internal political unit of the presidential administration (AP) are recommended to change iPhone phones, if they use them, to smartphones of other brands and with a different operating system. According to Kommersant, this information was brought to officials at the beginning of the month. According to a Kommersant source aware of this decision, it is possible that the AP will even purchase new secure phones for its employees to make it easier for them to abandon American technology. An interlocutor close to the AP says that officials of regional domestic political blocs will receive similar recommendations. Such measures are pragmatic, but it is important to maintain a balance between ensuring information security and employee productivity, experts say. Employees of the internal political unit of the AP need to get rid of the iPhone by the beginning of April: they were given this instruction at a seminar held in early March in the Moscow region. Several sources who attended the event told Kommersant about this. A source close to the AP has heard that the ban on using Apple technology will also apply to officials involved in internal politics in regional administrations.

The conditional internal political block of the AP includes four departments: for internal policy, for public projects, for ensuring the activities of the State Council, for the development of information and communication technologies and communications infrastructure. Employees of the first three departments will be engaged in the campaign for the presidential election-2024, preparation for which, as previously reported by Kommersant, intensified at the beginning of 2023.