Information Security Conference Address Cybersecurity Challenges on the Internet of Things

The #Menasisc2017 Information Security Conference in the Middle East and North Africa region, which ended lately in Riyadh and hosted over 400 cyber security professionals, students and sponsors, tackled the cyber security challenges that threaten the Internet, especially in relation with economic, medical, governmental, financial and other services.
 

The CEO of VirtuPort and the organizer of the conference, Eng. Samer Omar, pointed out the seriousness in the escalation of attacks and cyber risks to the ‘Internet of Things’, which is acting as a threat to the interests and economic benefits of countries in a manner that is troubling. He called for more investment in advanced precautionary measures to counter threats ‘Cyber security’, and to consider the ramifications from a national security perspective.

Many international companies specialized in combating cyber threats and information security attended the conference, stressing the importance of promoting effective proactive measures that will systematically reduce the cyber security threat through the management of professionally qualified units.

For his part, the Executive Chairman of the Saudi Telecom Group (STC) delivered an inspirational opening speech that was well received by the audience including student contestants participating in the Hackathon competition.

Internet of Things Challenges

In his paper ‘Building a Secure Internet of Things World,’ Andy Purdy, Chief Security Officer at Huawei Technologies, USA, said that 80% of devices use simple passwords, 70% of unencrypted connections, and Internet devices such as cars can be exposed in the future.
"By 2020, more than 50 billion devices will be available to support Internet things, which in turn will provide a revenue of $7 trillion," added Purdy.
 

“‘The Internet of Things’ will improve quality of life, make all details of the world connected, transform what we do and how we do it,” Huawei's Chief Researcher said. He reviewed the problems in the field and identified them in privacy, home security and industrial safety.
The important information conveyed by Purdy is that 54% of the technology safety decision makers are concerned about the risks associated with Internet things in their various companies and institutions.
 

The Vice President of Cyber Security for Saudi Telecom Company Solutions, Fahad Aljutaily shared his insights on the value of cyber security in his paper entitled “Value of Cybersecurity – Things You Might Not Know".

Increased Attacks

Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, A10 NETWORKS Mohamed Al-Moneer noted in his paper "Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) implications, techniques, and effective measures" that OVH, a French cloud computing company,  was exposed to 1 terabytes per second worth of DDoS attacks. He added that the increase in attacks is four times higher, with 307% growth, after which he elaborated that spending on attacks will increase by 74% in the next six months.

Expected Expenditure

George Patsis, Chief Executive Officer of Obrela, stated that the 3 billion Internet users and 40 billion IP-related devices point to the increasing cyber-attack and development.
Patsis said global spending on information protection would rise by $ 117.4 billion by 2019, and cyber security spending between 2017 and 2021 would reach $ 1 trillion.

Principal Systems Engineer at Fortinet, Charbel Sarkis, explained in his paper that 51% of companies were hacked last year, and said that "85% of the time it takes more than one hour to detect a threat"
According to Sarkis, addressing the security challenges now requires the need to protect more complex networks to increase cyber-attacks, especially given the weakness of existing technological systems and the growing reliance on Internet things.

Kaspersky Lab's Cybersecurity Engineer, Ramy Al-Damati, reviewed a timeline of the evolution of rates of viruses from 1994, where the rate of new viruses was one virus per hour, and in 2006 a new virus every minute. In 2011, the rate of virus was every second, and the evolution of the matter in a remarkable manner this year, the emergence of 323 thousand new samples of viruses per day.
"The average cost of a single penetration is $891,000 for target audiences, especially companies in different sectors, and growth of up to 200% of the cost of recovery during the first week of detection of a security breach," he said.

 

Discussion Sessions

Cyber Security Delivery Director at Saudi Telecom Company Solutions, Abdulrahman AL Manea, conducted the session on "Managed Security Services" and reviewed the success stories, adding value and selection criteria. The second session was moderated by the General Manager of the Saudi Telecom Company Yasser Al Swailem where he tackled the topic of "Security as a Service, Clean Piping, Vulnerability Assessment, E-mail and the Internet as a Service".

Worth mentioning, the #menaisc2017 annual Information Security Conference in the Middle East and North Africa region is being held for the fifth time in the region and for the third time in Saudi Arabia. The researchers and specialists praised the announcement of a new Cyber Security Commission in Saudi Arabia, and considered it a strategic step that came in at a critical time, after the escalation of attacks on the information infrastructure.

According to VirtuPort's CEO, Samer Omar, the conference achieved its objectives of promoting an advanced society in the technology sector and enhancing opportunities for senior leaders and thinkers in the field of electronic information security to meet with government officials and specialized sectors in the Kingdom.

Sponsors of the Conference

STCS is the lead sponsor of the MENA ISC 2017 and the exclusive sponsor of this year’s hackathon. Huawei is the Platinum Sponsors for the conference with Gold sponsors from A10 Networks, Fortinet, Kaspersky and Obrela.
Silver sponsors include AccessData, Aiuken, Anomali, Cyberscore, Fidelis, Forcepoint, McAfee, Micro Focus, Nexthink, Palo Alto Networks, Redseal, Symantec, Tenable, Cisco, IBM and Thales. Other sponsors include W7Worldwide