Over 72 participants from government entities, companies and other public authorities hailed Oman’s commitment to making the country free from cyberattacks and enhancing cyber protection to those establishments which operate from the Sultanate.
“All the participants liked the sessions and they went home with better insight and knowledge about the cyberspace and cyberattacks, how to avert them and how to tackle such scenarios”, said Aziza Sultan al Rashdi, Director, Cyber Security Professional Services at the Oman National CERT, ITA told the Observer.
Speaking on the sidelines of the three-day National Cybersecurity Drill at the Kempinski Hotel Muscat, Al Rashdi said that the National Drill was necessitated at a time when the complexity of worldwide cyberattacks is increasing and number of victims were on the rise and Oman is not exempted.
“This is even bitter in the malware and the related usage of cryptocurrency”, she said.
The experts from different entities who participated in the Drill opined that a stronger and wider network of all stakeholders at both domestic and international levels is the need of the hour besides attending to capacity building and making legal frameworks and updating technology, to tackle the menace of cyberattacks in the modern times.
Organised by the Information Technology Authority (ITA), represented by Oman National CERT witnessed IT techies from 72 government entities and critical infrastructure sectors such as banks, utilities, transport, logistics and oil and gas taking part in various sessions.
A cross section of real-time incidents, mock drills and empirical studies were conducted during the three days while global experts shared their knowledge with over 72 government entities and the critical infrastructure sector units as well as other cyber professionals in the Sultanate.
The event focused on building human national capabilities of government entities and national critical infrastructure at the sultanate to handle all kinds of cybersecurity incidents and to enhance their readiness and preparedness to respond to these incidents. Additionally, this drill aimed at enhancing coordination and cooperation between ITA’s OCERT and different government and private entities in all sectors.
“Added to these criminal activities over the dark web, crimes like selling computer viruses, spyware and hacking software too are on the rise and Oman is proud to have played host to such a high level brainstorming sessions”, adds Al Rashdi.
The 3-day national drill titled, “The Constant Threat & Quot; Malware and the Dark Internet” also saw the ITA implementing a number of scenarios for simulating some cybersecurity threats and how they can be handled through Cybersecurity Readiness Teams “CERTS” as well as measuring the response rate between participating teams to ensure continuation of joint efforts to address cyber threats.
According to the annual report by the World Economic Forum, Malware is considered as one of the highest risks in technology worldwide because of its high probability of occurrence and high impact on valuable data.
The first day of the drill included the presentation of papers by a number of experts and specialists in cybersecurity to highlight the role of CERTs in responding to cyber incidents and the importance of developing the skills of national human resources, especially with the technological advancements, which is accompanied by an improvement in the level of threats and hackers’ capabilities and ways.
The first paper addressed the future of threats in the new digital era, presented by Rami al Dimati from Kaspersky while Haitham al Hajri, Cybersecurity Executive, ITA presented the second paper that talked about Crypto-jacking.
The third paper addressed internet security and privacy, by Adel Abd al Monem, and Saif al Hinai, Data Security Analyst talked about dark web crimes.
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