As part of the activities of the Cyber Security month entitled “ Safe Cyber Space”, the National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA) yesterday (Sunday) honoured nine entities among the 91 who participated in the training programme for cyber crime prevention.
According to an official statement, through this honour, NCSA aims to strengthen partnership and collaboration with experts and enhance capabilities within the national organisations to benefit from the training programmes provided by the agency to achieve the national strategic objectives and maintain and regulate national cyber security and promote the national vital interests and protect them from cyber crime.
During the opening speech, engineer Khalid al-Hashmi, director of Cyber Excellence and Enablement Affairs at NCSA, expressed appreciation for the efforts of the awarded entities and their contribution to supporting the agency’s vision. He stressed on the Agency’s belief that protecting cyberspace is a collaborative effort between the private and government sectors to exchange expertise in this field.Ali Abdullah al-Buainain, assistant undersecretary for shared services affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MoEHE), thanked the agency for its constructive efforts and training initiative to raise awareness and prevent cybercrime.Khalifa al-Salahi al-Yafei, president of Qatar Finance and Business Academy, explained that in light of the communication development and the digital transformation tools, there are cyber security challenges and threats that may have catastrophic effects on the economic, security and societal levels if they occur. “This requires taking all the precautions to combat them as part of a comprehensive cyber security strategy that takes into account the acquisition of advanced technologies and applications, and the development of human competencies who are capable of responding to cyber attacks,” he said.Dr Ahmed Elmagarmid, Qatar Computing Research Instiute's executive director, stressed on the importance of co-operation between the institute and the agency. Hasan Khan, Cisco country manager, said the National Cyber Governance and Assurance Affairs addresses the need for the country to become self-sufficient in Cyber Security and to cater the immediate needs for hosting the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. More than 75,000 government employees have been trained to date under the programme for cyber crime prevention and 30,000 have graduated so far with an accredited certificate from the National Cyber Security Agency.