by the UAE’s Cyber Security Council
09—2022-09– Dubai, The 3rd edition of the “Cybersecurity Innovation Series” endorsed by the UAE’s Cyber Security Council concluded its sessions in Dubai yesterday. The series focused on discussing the most prominent challenges, best practices and effective strategies for enhancing the cybersecurity for organisations and individuals.
His Excellency Dr. Mohammed Hamad Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cyber Security for the UAE Government, said that the main goal is to focus on awareness, as that is usually the weakest link in many cyber-attacks, which are launched from one country to another and are not directed directly to this country using encryption, deception and others, is the user, which makes it difficult to reach those responsible for these attacks, stressing that they represent a challenge in all electronic crimes.
Mr. Sultan Al Owais, Digital Lead Ministry of Cabinet Affairs gave a very interesting opening speech on the Topic: The Economics of Cybersecurity. His presentation gave a very holistic overview of the current scenario in the country alongside the current trends like importance of cybersecurity, the opportunities in the region; he also discussed important subjects like the opportunity costs of digitalisation. Furthermore, he stressed upon the importance of having enough skilled talent within the country to help meet the needs of the economy given the rising threats.
Ashraf Khalil, chief cyber security expert at Huawei Middle East, commented, “The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the pace of use of cloud services and digital transformation, which has led to an increase in cyber-attacks and challenges, which put us in front of a greater responsibility as information security experts to work with companies and different groups of society to provide a safe environment for business.”
He urged all institutions, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, to take measures to deal with the increasing and expected risks by raising the efficiency of protection and monitoring systems. The data also advised not to pay any sums of money to hackers or attackers.
He added, “All members of society are targeted by cyber-attacks. Awareness must be taken into consideration, and cyber-training should be made available to all individuals and the society as a whole. .
He concluded: “There is an acute shortage of competencies and specialists, as there is a demand for more than 3 million jobs in the field of cybersecurity, which represents an opportunity for job seekers from all disciplines to learn and acquire cybersecurity skills, as the initial university degree is not required for specialization in light of the availability of many programs To qualify and acquire the information and skills necessary to enter the world of cybersecurity, bearing in mind that it requires strong desire and commitment, while allocating sufficient time for study and excellence.
Emad Haffar, Head of Technical Experts at Kaspersky commented “With targeted attacks becoming increasingly sophisticated across all industries, just reacting to an incident is not enough. Enterprises of all sizes should mandate the use of threat intelligence within their cyber defence strategy. The Kaspersky Threat Intelligence provides enterprises with superior visibility from the east to the west. Our regional researchers are currently tracking the activity of more than 29 APT groups actively present in the Middle East region. These groups primarily target government entities and large enterprises and getting insights on their operations is a critical step in building a resilient cybersecurity strategy.”
The event was attended by Lt. Col. Hamad Khalifa Swuidan Al Nuaimi, Head of Communications Department, Information Technology Center, Abu Dhabi Police General Headquarters, Adam Docrat, Head of Information Technology, Aster Group, Sreejith Nair, Director of Information Security – Careem, and Shafiullah Ismail, Vice President – Cyber Security and architecture. Governance and Risks – Mubadala Capital, Imran Sheikh, Chief Technology Officer – Virgin Mobile UAE, and Shahabuddin, Director of IT Infrastructure and Group Security – International Investment Consortium.
The event sessions covered how developing cloud infrastructure security practices is critical to business, and how proactive threat scanning techniques help protect against attacks. The seminars included topics, most notably: “Securing the digital future” and how networks can deal with attacks, and “Strategies to counter electronic attacks and ways to protect data”, in addition to clarifying the meanings of “ransomware” and providing advice on strengthening defences against these programs, as well as “challenges.” Data Security”, and a panel discussion entitled “The Future of Cyber Security, Challenges and Best Practices,” leading to a “360-degree Internet Risk Management Process” to adopt new technologies to improve efficiency.
The forum included working sessions with the participation of 35 experts in the cybersecurity sector and the attendance of more than two hundred people interested in the digital economy, during which they shed light during 25 sessions on the latest innovations and discuss the measures taken by government and private institutions to repel cyber-attacks, and discussions also include ways to develop information infrastructure and expand and improve them in the ever-evolving world of the Internet.
As part of the event, the Cybersecurity Innovation Series Awards for the year 2022 were bestowed upon the trendsetters and trail blazers of the year. The awards were, Dr. Mohamed Al-Kuwaiti, Head of the UAE Cybersecurity Council won in the category of Cyber-Influencer of the Year, Huawei won in two categories which were Cybersecurity Company of the Year and Best Enterprise Security Solution of the Year, Mr. Sultan Al Owais won the award of the Cyber- Personality of the Year, Dr. Fene Osakwe won the Cybersecurity Youth Mentor-2022, Mr. Shafiullah Ismail from Mubadala Capital won in the category of Cybersecurity Deployment of the Year and last but not the least Inspira bagged an award in the category of Secure Digital Transformation & Supply Chain.
