Khalid Al Hashmi, Assistant Undersecretary of the Cyber Security Sector at Ministry of Transport and Communications, at the two-day 9th Cyber Defense Summit.
DOHA: The information technology experts from both government and private sector yesterday emphasized the need of strengthening cyber security systems primarily focusing on GCC countries.
“It has become increasingly important for the public, private and academic sectors to collaborate in dealing with cyber threats,” said Khalid Al Hashmi, Assistant Undersecretary of the Cyber Security Sector at Ministry of Transport and Communications, in his opening talk at the two-day 9th Cyber Defense Summit. “The Cyber Defense summit serves a critical purpose in bringing together stakeholders with the necessary skills and industry insights to truly tackle the many nuanced cyber security challenges facing Qatar today,” Al Hashmi added.
The summit was attended by leading thought-leaders and over 100 chief information officers (CIOs), chief information security officers (CISOs) and heads of cyber security of various companies from across the world.
Under the theme “Protect. Detect. Mitigate”, high-level cyber security stakeholders reinforced the importance of cyber security in Qatar, highlighting the need for capacity building, collaboration and knowledge-sharing. As many as 14 leading information and cyber security companies showcased the latest in cyber security solutions and technology in the summit as well.
Shaik Abdulkhader, Chief Technology Security Officer (CISTO) at Vodafone Qatar, said that international voice calls revenue had dropped by 50 percent year by year in the last three years.
Hussam Sheikh Ali, Regional Sales Director at Scope, (the firm which has dealership rights of French cyber-security company Stormshield) said that Stormshield had around 50 clients in Qatar mainly from banking and oil and gas sector. “GCC countries are facing cyber threats and have suffered attacks therefore these countries in particular need strengthening of their existing systems,” he added.
Ahmad TELLO, another marketing officer from Bitdefender, a Romanian cyber security company, said that Bitdefender was providing cyber attack protection to around 500 million users. A panel discussion was also held on the partnership between Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and importance of making cyber security everybody’s business. Sami Al Shammari, IT Director at the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy; Shaik Abdulkhader, CISTO at Vodafone Qatar and Edward Ganom, Chief Information Security Officer at Commercial Bank of Qatar were among the panelists.
Majid Wani, Country Manager Qatar at Fortinet discussed “cyber security and third platform technologies” while Sameh Sabry, Associate Vice President at Spire Solutions gave a presentation on “threat hunting – leveraging intelligence and analytics for proactive security”.
On the second day, a large number of young IT and cyber security enthusiasts from around Qatar participated in the summit. Over 100 post-graduate and graduate students from Hamad bin Khalifa University, Qatar University, College of North Atlantic and more witnessed a series of security talks and live hacking demonstrations.
