Cyber Defence Summit – Middle East and North Africa to discuss framework for a regional cyber security plan

Co-organised by French business information group naseba, the summit is bringing together key regional figures and industry experts to meet, discuss and share their expertise. Knowledge sharing and learning from other experience is the only way to counter rapidly evolving cyber attacks.

naseba managing director Nicholas Watson said, “State sponsored cyber attacks have dominated the news headlines for the past six months. Even when the Aramco incident is brought up everyone is keen to mention that 30,000 computers were rendered useless, no one talks about the recovery time and damage. A few reports have mentioned that it took Aramco approximately more than a month to completely recover.”

In a region that is economically dependent on oil and gas – any disruption to the supply, rigging or purification of the primary source of revenue will have catastrophic effects on the entire region.

“Critical infrastructure typically has a large population who are dependent on it for support. Thus, any potential breaches would often have far-reaching implications on the stakeholders. The recent attacks on Saudi Aramco and RasGas have further reinforced that the threat to critical infrastructures is real and collective efforts must be stepped up to better secure them,” noted Anthony Chan, e-Cop’s Regional Director of Strategy and Product Alliance.

e-Cop will be participating at the summit as a bronze sponsor along with other international solution providers like F-Secure, BAE Systems Detica, Cassidian and Commendo.

Kasper Holst Wochne, Director of International Business Development at Commendo emphasised the role the summit will play in improving cyber security.

“The need of cyber security has never been this important as it is getting more and more complex with different technologies available and no improvement on the security of its users. Cyber Defence Summit plays a very important role in bringing the elite task force together to reduce the risks of intruders exploiting confidential information,” he said.

President Obama’s cyber security executive order has allowed the United States of America to set up the foundations in which a ‘framework’ can be constructed between the government and private sector industries.

This allows intelligence to be gathered on cyber attacks and threats to privately owned critical national infrastructure so they can better protect themselves, the general population and the economy.

Establishing a similar framework for the region will be a key focus at the summit by the industry gurus and attendees. Speakers during the two-day summit will include Houlin Zhao, Deputy Secretary-General of ITU, Yurie Ito, Director of International Coordination at Japan CERT, Gerry Pennell, CIO of London Olympics 2012 and Tom Burton, BAE Systems Detica’s Director of Cyber Security Services in addition to several experts from Oman.