Cassidian, a provider of advanced secure networks and IT solutions to defence and governmental customers, will take part in the Cyber Defence Summit in Muscat next month as a Gold partner.

The summit, to be held on April  2 and 3, is the biggest initiative in the Middle East, focusing on protecting the region’s critical national infrastructure. It is endorsed by ITU-IMPACT, the largest cyber security alliance of its kind with 137 member nations, and is officially hosted by Oman National CERT and Information Technology Authority Oman.

Middle Eastern countries have made cyber defence a main priority, and are investing heavily in the industry sector. According to Frost & Sullivan Saudi Arabia alone will have spent over $33 billion on cyber security in the period 2007-2018. Oman, Qatar and the UAE have equally ambitious plans for the coming years, plans which have been strengthened by recent high profile attacks on Sony, IMF, FBI and the Syrian Ministry of Defence, a statement said.

“Unfortunately there is no doubt that the next major attack will be focused on national interests and on multiple countries. Where? When? How? Nobody knows. It’s the unpredictability that causes vulnerabilities to arise everywhere. The entire world, including the Middle East region, is unprepared; hence the timing of the Cyber Defence Summit is perfect. It will allow all the stakeholders to come together and share their experiences and solutions and build a full proof plan for the region,” said Guy Meguer, general manager for the Middle East at Cassidian Cyber Security.
 
The Cyber Defence Summit is the brainchild of Nicholas Watson, the managing director of naseba.
 
The summit provides Cassidian a perfect opportunity to demonstrate its innovative product dedicated to protecting industrial control systems – integrating firewall, whitelisting, intrusion protection, event logger and security operation centre capabilities into a defence system specialised on Scada networks, said the statement. - TradeArabia News Service