The Director of KINDI Computing Research Center Department, College of Engineering at Qatar University, Abdulaziz Al Ali, said KINDI provides services and research that helps tackle cybersecurity in Qatar by addressing practical problems in the petroleum industry, health, financial, and cloud computing.
Formed in 2012, KINDI (Knowledge Intelligence, Networked Data, and Interdisciplinary research) is focused on driving Qatar’s research and innovation in cybersecurity in line with Qatar National Vision 2030, which targets local capacity building. KINDI carries out interdisciplinary research across different sectors involving cybersecurity and artificial intelligence into other areas such as energy, transportation, health, and medicine.
As Qatar positions itself to become a regional hub for ICT and a destination for international investors, there have been significant steps to improve digital protection across several sectors.
The Qatar National ICT Plan 2015 was announced to protect the national critical information infrastructure and provide a safe and secure online environment for the different sectors. “Cybersecurity is a critical issue in the petroleum industry – a vital industry in Qatar’s economy."
“Researchers at KINDI have been involved in several NPRP projects to address threats in the petroleum processing infrastructure. One of the most recent projects investigates how intrusions can be detected in industrial control systems such as those used in oil refineries,” Dr. Abdulaziz told The Peninsula.
The project is led by Dr. Nader Meskin (from QU’s Electrical Engineering Department). It aims at using machine learning techniques for detecting anomalies in an industrial control system. This project’s results are expected to have a significant impact on any industry that relies on industrial control systems, such as the plants that process petrochemicals.
According to Dr. Abdulaziz, the growing popularity of public cloud storage and processing services has led to concerns about the security of data stored or processed through these services. “KINDI has been involved in many projects investigating techniques of how to provide better security for data in the Cloud. One example is the Adaptive Information Security in the Cloud project, which investigated how making adaptive security countermeasures to a specific context can make them more effective,” he added.
Dr. Khaled Khanand led the project in a collaboration between QU and the Open University in the UK. One of its key outputs is a framework for adaptive information security, granted a US patent in early 2020. In addition to the above example projects, KINDI is helping raise cyber-security awareness in Qatar. It has partnered with Thales and MoI to deliver Cyber Week, where many students have been involved in a Capture the Flag competition in addition to a training session on the KINDI/ Thales Cyber Range.
“In the future, we wish to impact cyber-security in Qatar on a much larger scale, where we will announce new initiatives on emerging topics such as federated machine learning, blockchain, digital forensics, and malware analysis,” Dr. Abdulaziz said. Providing a safe digital space is essential as Qatar has developed an e-Government portal through which residents and citizens can apply for online services and conduct electronic transactions.
