Qatar’s robust cybersecurity ensures safe financial transactions during World Cup, says industry expert

Qatar’s rapid progress in cybersecurity has been an essential element in ensuring that financial transactions, especially during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, are safe and protected, according to an industry expert."The ministerial vision of the State of Qatar had long foreseen the necessity of cybersecurity and the role it plays,” Dr Salah A Rustum, the chairman and president of cybersecurity solutions provider CIELTECH, told Gulf Times Tuesday.Dr Rustum explained that cybersecurity plays a major role in assuring the protection of private data, B2B businesses, and the encryption process, which protected all Internet communication and activities, including the Know Your Customer (KYC) of users.Given the volume of financial services and transactions that require digital technology during the World Cup, Dr Rustum lauded the State of Qatar’s efforts in stepping up its digitalisation strategy."It would have been practically impossible to cope with 4mn visitors and their respective payments and or collection of cash – the least to say! Not to mention opening the doors to money laundering without being able to interfere. Can you imagine the different reporters being efficient if it were not for the State of Qatar to digitise the operating systems?” Dr Rustum emphasised.He also underscored how tech startups and fintech companies in Qatar, and even financial technology, had catered to the needs of tourists and visitors to Qatar during the World Cup.Dr Rustum said: "What is crucial in my opinion are the online applications in general that facilitated the question and answer to the ordinary visitor and local layman, coupled with the important role played by those companies and databases that made it possible and easy for the visitor to reach the sought data. This will not change and people will go forward with it.”On the advantages Qatar had achieved in its digitalisation strategy and its impact on the World Cup, he said: "I think that it is more digitising than digitalisation in as much as the systems applied were made available to facilitate the running needs of visitors and were not issued by respective governmental decrees.”"In fact, the State of Qatar is fully aware of digitalising processes and had a planned foreseen vision of the propelled activities,” Dr Rustum also noted.According to Dr Rustum, the country’s banks and its related services, including the security sector, Qatar Red Crescent Society, hospitals, as well as the municipality of the City of Doha have been the prime beneficiaries of the services provided to Qatar’s tech startups and fintechs followed by house renting, hotels, coffee houses, travel agents, and taxis, among others.