The Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology (ictQATAR) envisages making Qatar a “botnet free” nation by this year, a senior official told gov.Infosec 2012, an Information Security conference, yesterday.
Al-Hashmi (right) and other officials from ictQATAR at the conference yesterday
“Partnerships have been established with service providers in this regard,” explained Khalid Sadiq al-Hashmi, executive director of Cyber Security at ictQATAR, in his welcome address at the event attended by various stakeholders.
A botnet (also known as a zombie army) is defined as a number of Internet computers that, although their owners are unaware of it, have been set up to forward transmissions (including spam or viruses) to other computers on the World Wide Web.
Any such computer is referred to as a zombie – in effect, a computer “robot” or “bot” that serves the wishes of some master spam or virus originator.
Most computers compromised in this way are home-based.
According to a report from Russia-based Kaspersky Labs, botnets – not spam, viruses, or worms – currently pose the biggest threat to the Internet.
A report from Symantec came to a similar conclusion.
“ICT is beneficial if online activities are safe, resilient and secure,” the official pointed out while explaining that in order to safeguard users, industry and government information and systems, ictQATAR created CS/Q-Cert, the nations centre for information security.
Q-Cert’s activities encompass Government Information Assurance (GIA), critical information infrastructure protection, incident management, threat intelligence, incident response and awareness and training.
Sectors are deemed critical when their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating impact on the national security and social well-being of a nation.
Announcing that the website www.qcert.org has been revamped, al-Hashmi said this is in line with the strategy to reach out to the stakeholders and provide the best services possible in the most effective way.
ictQATAR’s Cyber Security resilience manager Dana al-Abdulla stated that establishing an Information Security Management System (ISMS), providing Information Security awareness and management support are the basic requirements to combat cyber security challenges including hacking and data leakage.
Speaking on “Threat perspective and GIA policies”, she observed that ICT penetration is rapidly increasing in the government sector and all government agencies have their website.
“The GIA policies are formulated from most common international standards/best practices, allows straight forward path for certification against other standards e.g. ISO27001, and maps well with established standards such as ITIL,” the official said.
Q-Cert will provide training, consultation and guidance, and review the policies to reflect the emerging threats, she added.
