October 10th, 2016 (Doha)

“Risk management, collaboration and sustainable security talent is crucial to Qatar's fight against cyber crimes. The Cyber Defence Summit serves a critical purpose in bringing together key stakeholders to share industry insights and to truly tackle the many nuanced cyber security challenges facing Qatar today. I am happy that Naseba is also addressing the security talent gap by hosting CyQ for students tomorrow." said by Eng. Khalid Al-Hashmi, Assistant Undersecretary of the Cyber Security Sector at Qatar’s Ministry of Transport and Communications. Al-Hashmi was addressing at the 2 days 9th Cyber Defence Summit kicked off at the Hotel Westin, Doha. The summit is organised by Dubai based multi-national business facilitator Naseba. AlHashmi speech these was “Protect. Detect. Mitigate.”, high-level cyber security stakeholders reinforced the importance of cyber security in Qatar, highlighting the need for capacity building, collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

Technology has become a deeply integrated component of our personal and professional lives, and a lot of information is being processed. However, this has also increased the risks and threats of cyber attacks. The opening talk on “Overcoming one of the three grand challenges of Qatar” was presented.

Two days conference is participated by leading thought leaders and over 100 CIO's, CISO's and Heads of Cyber Security. In addition, 14 leading information and cyber security companies showcased the latest in cyber security solutions and technology in the summit’s dedicated networking area.

A panel discussion on the partnership between CIOs and CISOs and the importance of making cyber security everybody’s business led to key insights on the importance of ensuring management buy-in and planning security from a business-centric point of view. Panelists included Sami Al Shammari, IT Director at the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy; Shaik Abdulkhader, Chief Technology Security Officer (CTSO) at Vodafone Qatar; and Edward Ganom, Chief Information Security Officer at Commercial Bank of Qatar.

Experts gave a series of security talks focusing on specific cyber security tools and techniques. Majid Wani, Country Manager – Qatar at Fortinet discussed “Cyber security and third platform technologies”, and Sameh Sabry, Associate Vice President at Spire Solutions gave a powerful presentation on “Threat hunting – leveraging intelligence and analytics for proactive security”.

Commenting on his participation at the summit, Sabry said “The role of analytics in cyber security is ever-evolving, and this has been an ideal opportunity to explore its application within cyber threat hunting. The days of ‘wait and see’ security are well and truly over, and we look forward to participating in the creation of innovative, proactive solutions to detect and deal with threats.”

The summit’s concurrent interactive workshops were led by Raviraj Doshi, Chief Technology Officer at Smokescreen; Lynel D’Souza, Major Account Manager at Akamai Technologies; Dr. Marc Dacier, Research Director of Cyber Security at Qatar Computing Research Institute; and Dr. Spiros Bakiras, Associate Professor of CSE at Hamad bin Khalifa University. The day ended with an interactive group activity that encouraged industry-specific brainstorming.

Naveen Bharadwaj, Naseba's Production Manager said “Cyber-attacks have become economic impediments to the GCC nations. Despite Qatar's best attempts, it is still far from being fully cyber secure. A key objective of the summit is to support Qatar’s evolution into a more digitally secure, threat-aware nation, and we’re proud to have hosted several industry leaders and some of the region’s leading IT and cyber security companies. The latest inclusion of CyQ into the summit format will address the key issue of developing cyber security talent.”

The summit’s second day is featuring a youth-centric agenda and the first-ever hackathon in partnership with Hamad bin Khalifa University and IT Security Training and Solutions. Winner of the competition will be awarded at closing on Tuesday.