Communication security as the program of specialists training: substance, content of competencies, prospects of development

Abstract

Information wars that take place in the modern world and in Ukraine, in particular, have become a key threat to the existing world order. At the beginning of the XXI century the existence of states as independent sovereign systems depends on their ability to “hold” external information attacks and to implement in their background a consistent adequate communication policy.

In the world where information is gradually becoming a dangerous weapon, these factors raise the issue of training of highly specialized professionals, who could be responsible for building a clear, secure system of communication and interconnections both within the state and abroad. Their common mission is to understand how to respond to information threats and to eliminate them.

The facts testify that the demand for such “professionals" is beginning to form primarily in the state sector. In particular, it refers to the official statements of the EU foreign policy service on recruitment of experts on information war with Kremlin propaganda. For this purpose in Latvia and Estonia it is planned to launch Russian-language TV channels that will build their strategy with the help of such specialists. Also, at the end of April, this year Finland initiated to form its own working group to combat Russian propaganda. Not to mention Ukraine, which needs skilled personnel to protect its own information space, especially after development of the Ministry of Information Policy.The article aims at defining the competence-based approach to training the future professionals in communication security and development of the advanced fields of their high-qualitative training. The main results of the study are represented in the list of specialists’ professional competencies in the field  of communication security, which includes: capability to identify communication threats; peculiarities of civilized, manipulative and barbaric influences at the state, corporate and personal levels; categories of manipulators, types of manipulative traps, existing manipulative techniques; capability for using effective means to neutralize or counteract to manipulative influences; skills required for organization, planning and implementation of one’s actions in terms of information attacks; acquisition of communicative, organizational and technical methods of information protection in the existing information systems and networks.