Web guardians to repel Oman cyber attacks
CERT has equipped private and government firms with expertise to defend against threats
MUSCAT: An online army of web guardians is being trained to repel attacks against Oman, the agency responsible for online security has announced.
Real-time training to repel constant cyber attacks against Oman’s web space is in full flow, according to the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).
The Sultanate has dealt with 16,000 attacks so far this year, on top of the millions stopped by firewalls, according to the agency responsible for protecting our net.
That’s 2,666 every month, or 95 cyber attacks every single day.
The CERT team is training government staff to deal with the threats and has even staged mock attacks on networks.
Of the 16,000 cyber attacks this year, critical national infrastructure has been the most soughtafter target. “There is also an increased attack via ransomware and email blackmailing,” according to Badr Al Salehi, director general of Oman’s CERT. cyber attacks have been dealt with so far this year apart from the millions stopped by firewalls
Ranked fourth in the Global Cybersecurity Index 2017, Oman has continued training and awareness programmes to equip private and government firms to defend against threats.
However, due to rapid digitisation and new threats disrupting systems around the globe, CERT has now stepped up efforts to increase cyber security.
The latest in the series of programmes has trained 17 staff from government institutions as a part of its plan to combat cyber threats and check the strength of IT systems in the country.
“The purpose of this training is to give participants an in-depth knowledge on how to conduct penetration testing in real environments such as government agencies, financial institutions and other key installations,” a CERT spokesman said.
Penetration testing is a proactive measure where ethical hackers attack an organisation’s IT infrastructure in a controlled environment to check if it is equipped with the right security or if there is a lack of awareness among staff members.
The training also allows staff members to counter the threat of attacks on websites and IT servers in the organisation.
“The main goal for providing this kind of training is to enhance the cyber and information security knowledge in addition to improving best practices to mitigate security risks in order to ensure business continuity and to minimise the impact of security risks in the government sector,” the spokesman added.