doha: Qatar's Supreme Council for Communications and Information Technology (ictQatar), in collaboration with the Qatar Computer Emergency Response Team  

doha: Qatar's Supreme Council for Communications and Information Technology (ictQatar), in collaboration with the Qatar Computer Emergency Response Team (Q-Cert) and the globally renowned cyber-security group, the Cert Coordination Centre, will conduct a series of cyber security awareness workshops for heads of the country's IT community from today.

A series of four identical workshops will be held from 8am onwards at the Sheraton Doha on June 23, June 27 and June 29. Those who wish to attend either of these workshops may contact Wafa Abu Fowl on 4928260 or by e-mail at wafa@qatar.cmu.edu, a spokesman for ictQatar, said here yesterday. "Besides providing a detailed overview of the very significant risks associated with using computer networks, the workshops will also try to gather inputs from experts in Qatar for the Q-Cert plan," the spokesman added.

The Cert-CC is a division of the Software Engineering Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University. The Cert-CC was founded with the mission to respond to security emergencies on the Internet, serve as a focal point for reporting security vulnerabilities, as a model to help others establish incident response teams and raise awareness of security issues.

Since its inception in 1988, Cert-CC has responded to over 400,000 security incidents that affected hundreds of thousands of Internet sites, has worked over 12,000 reported vulnerabilities and issued hundreds of security advisories and bulletins. The Cert-CC has also helped foster the creation of over 200 other similar incident response teams worldwide.

"Carnegie Mellon and the CERT specifically has worked with countries and organisations worldwide to increase their research and development activities as well as increase their knowledge and experience in the protection of critical infrastructure," Richard D Pethia, Director of the SEI's Networked Systems Survivability (NSS) Programme and team leader of Q-Cert, said.

"We are pleased to partner with Qatar and ictQatar for the project," he added.

ictQatar's mission, the spokesman said, was to enable the community at large to use ICT to improve the quality of life, actively contribute to the social and economic development of Qatar and transform it into a knowledge-based, progressive society.

Q-CERT will assist the international Internet community by building cyber security expertise in Qatar and the GCC region.

Q-Cert will also work with public and private institutions as well as the general public in Qatar to provide proactive and guided approaches to managing ICT security, he added.

"We are delighted to have SEI's CERT programme in Qatar. It is intrinsic to ictQatar to bring the country in step with the best computing practices in the world and this helps realize our goal," Dr Hessa Al Jaber, Secretary General, ictQatar, said.