By Vinod Nair — MUSCAT: May 14 - The institutions in Oman continue to take precautionary measures on Sunday to protect data from any kind of cyberattacks even as the Information Technology Authority (IT) said the situation in Oman is under control and only one case of ransomware attack has been reported in one of the government organisations in the Sultanate. Several institutions even temporarily shut down servers to analyse possible damages or investigate whether there have been any attacks on the servers in Oman.
These steps were initiated despite a recent report that Oman is well prepared and ranked fifth in the world after the US, Canada, Australia, Malaysia that are best prepared to handle cyberattacks. In fact it is only the country from the Arab world to figure in the top 16.
The unprecedented global cyberattack has hit more than 200,000 victims in scores of countries, Europol said in London on Sunday, warning that the situation could escalate when people return to work.
An international manhunt was well under way for the plotters behind the world’s biggest-ever computer ransom assault.
The indiscriminate attack, which began last Friday, struck banks, hospitals and government agencies in more than 150 countries, exploiting known vulnerabilities in old Microsoft computer operating systems.
US package delivery giant FedEx, European car factories, Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, Britain’s health service and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn rail network were among those hit.
Meanwhile, the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital in Oman said that it has taken all precautionary measures to avoid the impact of ransomware. It added that the systems are functioning fully and refuted any social media reports.
ITA said it would like to notify the public that Oman has specialised teams capable to respond to information security emergencies and to deal with such cyberattacks in cooperation with the entities concerned.
ITA also assured that the situation in the Sultanate is under control and no need to worry as only one case has been reported in one of the government organisationa with a few number of systems infected with the virus.
The cybersecurity experts at ITA are currently evaluating the status and analyzing the available data in this regard.
ITA also clarified that the largely spreading virus targets Windows systems which have not been updated; therefore, organisations which are committed to follow cyber security standards, guidelines and frameworks developed and circulated earlier by the ITA, will be less affected.
In addition, all government entities have qualified teams capable of dealing and preventing these attacks, protecting their data, providing backups to the infected information if targeted.
Dr Bader bin Salim al Manthari, Director-General, Information Security Division at ITA, said, “We assure everybody that the issue is under control. However, at the same time, we would like to draw the at-tention of government and private organisations to the importance of taking serious protective measures to deal with all cybersecurity attacks generally including the necessity of making backups to all organisation’s data before starting the work, updating antiviruses programmes and activating auto scanning for all organisation’s network regularly.
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