23 May, 2009

• The Ministry of Environment & Water is the pioneer in recognizing the importance of cyber security since it is the 1st Federal entity to sign with the TRA aeCERT

The UAE Ministry of Environment & Water and the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), where the TRA represented one of its initiatives, the UAE Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT), which was accredited by the Ministerial Council for Services as the National CERT of the UAE.

The signing ceremony took place at the offices of the UAE Ministry of Environment & Water in Dubai, where the signatory were, H.E. Dr. Ahmed Rashid Bin Fahad, Minister of Environment & Water, and H.E. Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, TRA Director General.

In this respect, H.E. Minister Bin Fahad said: “It is my pleasure to sign this MoU that serves the Ministry’s values, especially with respect to participation and cooperation, initiation and pioneering, and quality and excellence. This MoU also reflects the Ministry’s goals, especially with respect to achieving ranks of excellence and pioneering in applying the international criteria of best practices; in addition to reflecting the Ministry’s aims, especially with respect to promoting and upgrading the levels of services provided to customers to attain constitutional distinction.”

“In this digital age, cyberspace security has become a vital necessity and a main condition to insure the safety of the institutions and their abilities to achieve their goals. Hence, wee are convinced that this agreement represents one of the Ministry’s necessities to achieve its main goals and aims regarding enhancing the environmental security, adopting the concept of integrated management, increasing the average of the biological security, achieving food security, and other goals and aims that need cyber security to be achieved,” added the Minister.

In his turn, H.E. Mr. Al Ghanim said: “It is within the strategy of the TRA to support a secured and safe cyberspace in the UAE; hence, this MoU is considered one of the core tasks of such a strategy. The aeCERT will provide specific services to enhance the security posture of the Ministry of Environment & Water IT infrastructure, through providing consultancy, education and awareness; advisory; monitoring and incident response; and research and analysis.”