18 October, 2009

With the rapid developments of the ICT and the expenditure in its usage, and to protect the confidentiality of information, WATANI program announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the UAE Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT) of the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA). This MoU is in line with WATANI's goals to protect all its stored electronic information, and preserve its national information wealth.

The signing ceremony took place within Gitex 2009 at Dubai World Trade Centre; where the signatories were H.E. Ahmad Obeid Al Mansouri, WATANI Director General, and H.E. Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, TRA Director General.

In this respect, Mr. Al Mansouri said: "WATANI owns many websites with a variety of nature and contents, such as 'WATANI', 'WATANI BLOGS', 'WATANI for CHILDREN', 'EMIRATES TREASURES', which was designed to be a storage for the living heritage of the UAE. The protection of these sites and information are considered very important. Still, WATANI supports the wise directives of the TRA that aim to aware the society of the threats that may occur from the misuse of the technology and the lack of information security awareness; which we think is a key factor for social development."

In his turn, Mr. Al Ghanim assured that this MoU will contribute in achieving a number of the TRA objectives for which the aeCERT was established, such as improving the IT infrastructure security of WATANI through providing consultancy, monitoring and incident response.

"The goals of the aeCERT are to enhance the cyber security law and assist in the creation of new laws; enhance information security awareness across the UAE; build national expertise in information security, incident management and computer forensics; provide a central trusted point of contact for cyber security incident reporting in the UAE; establish a national center to disseminate information about threats, vulnerabilities, and cyber security incidents; foster the establishment of and provide assistance to sector-based Computer Security Incidents Response Teams (CSIRTs); coordinate with domestic and international CSIRTs and related organizations; become an active member of recognized security organizations and forum," added Al Ghanim.

The TRA established the aeCERT as the cyber security coordination center in the UAE to facilitate the detection, prevention and response of cyber security incidents on the Internet.

The mission of the aeCERT, however, is to be the leading trusted secure cyber coordination center in the region, to sustain a resilient and vigilant ICT infrastructure against a broader set of cyber security threats and to build a secure and safe cyber culture in the UAE.