Director of National Cyber Security Enablement and Excellence Affairs at NCSA Khalid Al Hashemi addressing the event, yesterday. PIC: AMR DIAB
Doha, Qatar: Qatar’s commitment to enhance its cybersecurity and digital space has established a resilient cyber ecosystem with compelling market opportunities for foreign investors. Cybersecurity has played a vital role in driving Qatar’s digital transformation, securing the investment and business environment.
Global and regional cybersecurity experts discussed latest trends, strategies, and technologies shaping cybersecurity at the CyberX Summit & Awards - Qatar Edition organised by BConnect, yesterday.
Delivering the opening keynote address, Khalid Al Hashemi, Director of National Cyber Security Enablement and Excellence Affairs at National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA) shared the cybersecurity strategies and initiatives by NCSA in Qatar and goals that aim to enhance better cybersecurity, both regionally and globally.
Cybersecurity principle focuses on people, process and technology. “We believe in importance of enabling people to face cyber threats by implementing community cybersecurity awareness workshops and expanding our reach to include cybersecurity education curricula for schools," Al Hashemi said.
He added, the agency is working on the cyber training programme as well, that’s not only focusing on typical workforce but also a specific programme for leaders and graduates from the universities. The goal is to build, develop and enable Qatar’s cybersecurity workforce to the international sectors as one of our strategic objective is to promote, innovate the research in cybersecurity in the related fields.
The agency is also working on the cybersecurity innovation, research and development programme that helps with the preparation of the educational and the research entities with industrial and government entities, to have alignment together for protecting and utilizing the research. He noted, “This will allow us to apply world class level structure for all cyber related research and development activities.
Al Hashemi also discussed the agency’s roles in preparing and releasing the national cyber security strategies and the standards in addition to the security national initiatives. He noted that cybersecurity challenges are increasing especially with the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). This is due to the fact that AI may contribute to enhance the capabilities of cyber attacks and make them more sophisticated and complex, while it can also be used to raise the capability of countering those threats on the other hand.
In National Cyber Security Agency, “we believe that effective cooperation with competent partners and service providers along with subject matter experience can contribute to prosperity and in shaping the future of cybersecurity and all related fields, considering the paramount importance of cooperation between industry leaders and experts and government entities, he added.
Also speaking during the summit, Craig Jones, Director of Cybercrime, Interpol discussed about ‘Securing Digital Future: Collaboration Innovation and Leadership’.
CyberX Summit also saw informative panel discussions, keynote presentations, fire-side chat, spotlight tracks which highlighted the current initiatives and future trends to safeguard the organisations and business effectiveness.
