RIYADH: A ‘center of excellence’ needs to be created to thwart increasingly adept hackers, the head of the UAE’s Cyber Security Council has insisted.
Speaking at the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh, Mohamed Al Kuwaiti said plans to defeat cyberattacks need to be constantly changing, as adversaries are becoming more adept and gaining momentum through better techniques and procedures.
He said: “Today, be it in the cost of cybercrime, or the data leaks, I believe that adversaries are better off in many aspects.
“We’re trying to rethink the order of the cybersecurity. there has to be a continuous working group, something that allows us to build up that center of excellence.”
Al Kuwaiti added his voice to the clamor for cross-border collaboration to tackle cybercrime, and said: “It’s not only partnering, changing or exchanging information, it’s the hand-in-hand shoulder-to-shoulder work, from an operational perspective as well as from a technical perspective.”
Paul Griswold, chief product officer at US conglomerate Honeywell, told the forum he had seen notable progressive change since he entered the cybersecurity world in 1999.
“As time has gone on, there’s much more collaboration,” he said, adding: “There’s relationships between vendors, vendors have relationships with governments, and there is a great deal of information sharing.”