‘Concerted efforts needed to meet cyber security challenges’

Cyber security is a hot issue and requires international collaboration to overcome the challenges presented by ever-evolving technological advances, said HE Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada, Minister of Energy and Industry yesterday.
Dr al-Sada was speaking at a panel discussion at the inaugural session of the Annual Research Conference 2018 being held at the Qatar National Convention Centre. The other panellists at the conference were Vivek Kundra, former chief information officer of  the United States, David Roberts, distinguished faculty, Singularity University and Prof Hasan Mandal, president, Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. It was moderated by Deborah Wince-Smith, president and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness.
“The issue of cyber security was at a different level in the earlier days. Now it has moved to a level of espionage and stealing information. It is now much more dangerous as it has come to the level of sabotage. Cyber-attacks are aimed at inflicting damage on governments, businesses or other entities. Qatar’s experience today is that we do as much as possible to overcome the threat as we employee firewalls, upgrading our systems and procedures,” said Dr al-Sada.
“However, most cyber-attacks are coming from foreign countries. So, we need international collaboration, to ensure cyber security worldwide. We need closer international relations, conventions and agreements so that such sabotages can be stopped and make sure those who commit these crimes do not get away easily. We need concerted international efforts to fight it,” highlighted Dr al-Sada.
Roberts said that the world has to keep the Internet safe at any cost. “We created the Internet several decades ago. But it is not secure and we have to make it secure for future generations. We are taking on the grand challenge of creating a secure Internet. This is within our capacity and to do that we need to collaborate across the world to create a secure Internet and ensure the safe future of the humanity,” explained Roberts.
According to Kundra, it is an area that can be addressed very well if collaborative efforts are taken up. “This challenge can be turned into an huge opportunity. On the security perspective, it will be the area where the next generation of warfare will be waged. This can be battled in collaboration and we can achieve the desired result,” said Kundra.
Prof Mandal also pointed to collaboration and international efforts at overcoming the challenges involved in cyber security.