‘Digitisation increased threats’

The project started officially in 2015 by training 40 employees from government bodies.

A recent report by Booz Allen Hamilton showed that online threats affect a quarter of users in the Sultanate due to digitisation.

“Digitisation has certainly created issues with cyber security. People or unsuspecting employees are the weak links and backdoor to IT infrastructure of the country. CERT is doing excellent work to train government employees and institutions to protect critical infrastructure.

“Private companies need to protect their own with staff training or else they may be the backdoor to government IT infrastructure. It is all interconnected and people need to understand how one system compromised in the network can bring down the whole network,” Mohammed Nayaz, partner at EY advisory services said.

“We have seen a wave of cyber attacks recently around the world and there is a need for more training and education in cyber security. I think doing more will always be good. We have seen graduates from SQU reach high positions in IT security while a lot of students have taken up separate courses to do IT security. This signifies how serious people take IT security in Oman,” Ahmed Al Mashry, a professor at the Computer Engineering Department at Sultan Qaboos University said. Oman’s eGovernance system has been hailed as a leading global framework which ensures that government IT projects and systems are sustainable and comply with Information Technology Authority (ITA) strategies and objectives.