Cyber Security Centre holds training programme

The Cyber Security Centre at the Ministry of Interior (MoI) yesterday inaugurated a training programme for the prevention of cybercrime aimed at equipping employees in the field of information technology and systems in government agencies and institutions with the necessary skills.
The programme focuses on building capacity and developing the skills of the employees responsible for protecting vital infrastructure, and upgrading the expertise in the field of cyber security in various sectors in the country.
The programme will attract 52,000 trainees from various government and vital sectors in the country. The project will be implemented over a period of two years, during which staff will undergo five training levels.
The Assistant Director of the Cyber Security Centre at the Ministry of Interior Major Othman Salem al-Hamoud made a presentation during which he explained the objectives of the programme, its various stages and its importance in preparing a generation of qualified cadres to protect electronic systems in various state bodies and institutions.
For his part, the Director of International Co-operation Department Major General Abdul Aziz Abdullah al-Ansari explained that the country is facing a great challenge that imposes the importance of these training programmes for its agencies and institutions in general, pointing out that hacking of any institution of the country is tantamount to hacking the whole state, and therefore necessitates measures to protect the state as a whole.
He added that the Ministry of Interior launches such programmes because it paid a high price when Qatar News Agency website was hacked, necessitating the introduction of a new path in terms of information protection.
Al-Ansari said, “We have now reached the second stage in which representatives of all state bodies and institutions have been gathered, and there is a tendency to include the private sector in the programme to protect their information, because if any of these entities is hacked, the systems of state institutions is also hacked”.
He pointed out that Qatar is on the threshold of a major challenge, which is hosting the 2022 World Cup.
The CEO of Qatar Finance and Business Academy Dr Khalid al-Horr praised the partnership between the academy and the Ministry of Interior.
For his part, the Director of the Centre for Cyber Security at the Ministry of Interior Major Mahmoud Salah Ibrahim said that the programme is working to strengthen the protection of vital information infrastructure, both in terms of its ability to prevent cyber attacks and detect if they occur, and also improve the response to these attacks and the ability to quickly recover from them effectively.