Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry is forming a cyber force as government security agencies expand the use of artificial intelligence to identify vulnerabilities in public-facing state systems, officials said Thursday.
The measures were presented on Oct. 2 during a sectoral meeting on “Cybersecurity in the Defence Sector” at the ADEX 2026 international defense exhibition in Baku.
Cyber Force to Recruit Technical Personnel
Elshan Hasanov, head of the Defense Ministry’s Cybersecurity Department, said the new cyber force was being established on the instructions of Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov.
The ministry plans to recruit service members with technical knowledge, including conscripts with relevant skills, for the unit. Hasanov said the ministry has already created a unified cybersecurity structure and that an operations center monitors its systems and the networks of the armed forces’ service branches around the clock.
Davud Rustamov, head of the State Security Service’s Cybersecurity Operations Center, said no serious cyber incidents had been recorded in Azerbaijan’s defense sector. He said, however, that military websites and systems were increasingly being targeted by state-backed groups seeking confidential information and data about the movement of military equipment.
AI Audits State Systems
Nadir Novruzov, a department head at the Special Communication and Information Security State Service, said artificial intelligence is already being used to audit government systems accessible from the internet.
He said the country has hundreds, and potentially thousands, of such systems. The results of automated checks are being compared with findings from human-led security audits and penetration tests, with the goal of eventually involving AI directly in penetration testing.
Officials are also preparing unified requirements for the use of artificial intelligence by government agencies. The work is focused on risks including data leaks, prompt-injection attacks, data poisoning, the use of public services such as ChatGPT and Claude, and deepfake technology.
The proposed requirements are expected to be discussed further on Oct. 20 at the ninth summit of heads of state information technology and security agencies. Officials said rules governing “publicly significant information infrastructure” could also be extended to designated private companies after approval.
Source: Vesti Baku