Greenatom Wins CNews Award for Nuclear Industry Cybersecurity Project
Greenatom, Rosatom's IT integrator, has completed a large-scale project to replace imported network security technologies across Russia's nuclear industry.
Imported firewalls within the nuclear sector's centralized IT infrastructure have been replaced with the Russian-developed Kontinent 4 platform. The project received the CNews Import Substitution of the Year 2026 award in the Information Security category. Its key achievement was completing the migration without interrupting corporate services that support hundreds of thousands of Rosatom employees and the operation of mission-critical systems.
The Core of Network Security
Replacing high-performance firewalls is one of the most complex architectural tasks in enterprise networks. These systems form both the security perimeter and the core security layer through which massive volumes of traffic flow, including data exchanges between data centers, regional facilities and remote users. Traditionally, replacing such infrastructure requires extended downtime, extensive system reconfiguration and service interruptions.
For the nuclear industry, where IT infrastructure is classified as critical information infrastructure, maintaining uninterrupted business operations is mandatory. A complete outage could affect engineering systems, financial applications and workforce management platforms. Greenatom engineers therefore faced the challenge of delivering a seamless migration to a domestic hardware and software platform without compromising either service availability or cybersecurity.
Migration Automation with Atom NC
To minimize risk and eliminate human error, Greenatom engineers developed a specialized software tool called Atom NC. The utility was designed to automate the analysis, validation and migration of network security configurations.
Core-level firewalls contain thousands of complex routing rules, filtering policies, network address translation (NAT) settings and access control policies. Manually transferring these configurations to a new platform would not only have taken months but also introduced risks of security vulnerabilities, duplicate rules and traffic-routing failures. Atom NC automatically converted configuration data from foreign-made equipment into formats compatible with Kontinent 4.
Requirements for a Domestic Solution
Kontinent 4 firewalls were selected because they maintain high throughput while providing functionality comparable to the foreign systems previously in service. The Russian-developed platform delivers protection against a broad range of network threats, supports high-load virtual private networks (VPNs) and integrates deeply with security information and event management (SIEM) systems.
Russian information security technologies are now capable of meeting the requirements of the country's largest industrial groups with geographically distributed operations. The platform has successfully completed rigorous certification testing under Russia's FSTEC information security standards, a mandatory requirement for deployment at Category I critical information infrastructure facilities.
Significance for the Critical Infrastructure Market
The CNews Import Substitution of the Year 2026 award recognizes more than the replacement of imported equipment. It acknowledges the successful execution of a comprehensive migration program. Greenatom's experience with the Atom NC utility and its approach to seamless migration provides a valuable model for the broader market.
Many major organizations in the power, transportation, financial, oil and gas, and public sectors are now facing the challenge of replacing foreign-made network equipment under tight deadlines and strict regulatory requirements.
Migration methodologies, automation tools and performance testing practices developed and validated within the nuclear industry can be replicated across other critical infrastructure facilities. That could shorten import substitution timelines while reducing operational risks for other large operators.
The completed project strengthens Russia's technological sovereignty and reduces dependence on technologies affected by policy decisions made by unfriendly countries. Establishing a domestic network security architecture built on certified information protection technologies is becoming the industry standard across the nuclear sector, while improving cyber resilience as the volume of network attacks continues to grow.
