WAK­ING UP TO SE­CU­RITY NEEDS

Alarmed at the wide spec­trum of grow­ing threats posed by crim­i­nals, gov­ern­ments around the world have been us­ing lat­est tech­nol­ogy to counter them. Qatar­To­day spoke to par­tic­i­pants of Milipol Qatar 2014, the bi­en­nial in­ter­na­tional ex­hi­bi­tion on in­ter­nal s

Qatar Today - - INSIDE THIS ISSUE - BRI­GADIER SHEIKH NASSER BIN FA­HAD AL THANI Chair­man, Milipol Qatar 2014 Com­mit­tee

How are gov­ern­ments re­spond­ing to the grow­ing threats posed by crim­i­nals and ter­ror­ists around the world? Qatar To­day speaks to par­tic­i­pants of Milipol Qatar, the in­ter­na­tional ex­hi­bi­tion on in­ter­nal se­cu­rity which took place last month, dur­ing which many global firms show­cased their lat­est tech­nolo­gies and equip­ment.

T he need for con­stant up­grad­ing of se­cu­rity mea­sures has been ne­ces­si­tated as no threat can be ig­nored around the world to­day, par­tic­u­larly in the Mid­dle East, and sev­eral com­pa­nies are de­vel­op­ing new prod­ucts and tech­nolo­gies for en­sur­ing in­ter­nal se­cu­rity in ar­eas like com­mu­ni­ca­tions and bor­der con­trol man­age­ment sys­tems, among oth­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of a survey by trade pub­lisher “En toute sécu­rite,” the Mid­dle East's se­cu­rity mar­kets grew 12% to a value of 16 bil­lion Euros (QR76.79 bil­lion) in 2012, com­pared with an av­er­age of 5.5% growth in over­all spend­ing world­wide. This is be­cause the lo­cal gov­ern­ments have given ut­most im­por­tance to in­ter­nal se­cu­rity due to the pres­ence of vast oil and gas re­sources.

The Mid­dle East cy­ber se­cu­rity mar­ket alone is ex­pected to be around QR34.8 bil­lion ($9.56 bil­lion) by 2019 as against QR18.81 bil­lion ($5.17 bil­lion) and hence is prone to be a tar­get for hack­ers.

Among all coun­tries in the re­gion, Saudi Ara­bia is likely to be the largest mar­ket on the ba­sis of spend­ing and adop­tion of cy­ber se­cu­rity so­lu­tions and ser­vices.

“It is like a race where the crim­i­nals want to outsmart the of­fi­cials but the lat­ter has a job to stop such peo­ple in their tracks by us­ing in­no­va­tive tech­nolo­gies,” says Michael Weatherseed , Di­rec­tor of Se­cu­rity Business Unit of the Paris-based Comexposium.

Peo­ple from all over the world visit Milipol Qatar to find out the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in se­cu­rity-re­lated tech­nolo­gies and up­date them in their re­spec­tive in­ter­nal se­cu­rity sys­tems. “There has to be in­no­va­tion and gov­ern­ments have to per­form to curb any at­tack,” Weatherseed adds.

Saudi’s NBS Project

An ex­am­ple of how se­ri­ous the GCC coun­tries are to pro­tect its cit­i­zens is Saudi Ara­bia com­mis­sion­ing in Septem­ber this year the North­ern Bor­der Se­cu­rity (NBS) project, which is a fully-in­te­grated tech­no­log­i­cal se­cu­rity-so­lu­tion en­com­pass­ing 900 km of the bor­der with Iraq.

The project is be­ing im­ple­mented by Air­bus De­fence and Space as part of the Saudi Bor­der Guard De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, and is aimed at se­cur­ing the king­dom's fron­tiers in view of the ter­ror threats em­a­nat­ing from the mil­i­tant groups in Iraq and Syria.

It in­cludes one sand berm, three fences, seven Com­mand and Con­trol (C2) Cen­tres, 32 Re­sponse Sta­tions, 240 re­sponse ve­hi­cles and 10 Surveil­lance Re­con­nais­sance Ve­hi­cles. Se­cu­rity is en­forced through 40 surveil­lance tow­ers, equipped with Air­bus

“Th­ese lat­est equip­ments and gad­gets would come in handy for the gov­ern­ment as it will be host­ing a se­ries of in­ter­na­tional events dur­ing the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. We need to de­velop our se­cu­rity sys­tems to en­sure that the events would be free of any un­to­ward in­ci­dent.”

DS TRGS- SEC radars and day/night cam­eras, and 38 com­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­ers, all of which are con­nected to the C2 cen­tres, the Na­tional HQ and the Min­istry of In­te­rior over 1.45 mil­lion km of fi­bre-op­tic ca­bles.

Qatar ink pacts

Even Qatar's In­te­rior Min­istry has signed agree­ments with sev­eral firms worth over QR309 mil­lion. The com­pa­nies would pro­vide 20 Ital­ian-made search and res­cue boats for the Coasts and Bor­ders Se­cu­rity depart­ment cost­ing around QR34 mil­lion, 24 state-of-the art fire fight­ing ve­hi­cles and main­te­nance of a num­ber of fire and res­cue ve­hi­cles for the Civil De­fence at a cost of QR61.5 mil­lion, be­sides a num­ber of se­cu­rity surveil­lance sys­tems and pro­grammes for QR22.4 mil­lion.

“Th­ese lat­est equip­ments and gad­gets would come in handy for the gov­ern­ment as it will be host­ing a se­ries of in­ter­na­tional events dur­ing the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. We need to de­velop our se­cu­rity sys­tems to en­sure that the events would be free of any un­to­ward in­ci­dent,” says Bri­gadier Sheikh Nasser Bin Fa­had Al Thani, who is chair­man of the Milipol Qatar 2014 Com­mit­tee.

Mex­ico City re­lieved

In the far off-Latam re­gion, when Mex­ico City was plagued by a spurt in crimes in the first decade of the mil­len­nium, the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment de­cided in 2009 to im­ple­ment the Ci­u­dad Segura project by Thales to pro­tect the cit­i­zens and pre­vent at­tacks on strate­gic sites, among oth­ers.

The Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment awarded the project to a French company, Thales, which started in­stalling over 50,000 cam­eras all over the city. The re­sults were en­cour­ag­ing.

“There has been a re­duc­tion in the crime rate by 23% in the last three years, and the re­sponse time was re­duced from 12 min­utes to 4 min­utes and 30 seconds. The num­ber of ve­hi­cle thefts was re­duced by half and the op­er­a­tional ef­fi­ciency of the law-enforcment au­thor­i­ties has in­creased by 19.1% dur­ing the same pe­riod,” says Do­minique Gaiardo Vice Pres­i­dent and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Thales Group

“It is like a race where the crim­i­nals want to outsmart the of­fi­cials but the lat­ter has a job to stop such peo­ple in their tracks by us­ing in­no­va­tive tech­nolo­gies.”

MICHAEL WEATHERSEED Di­rec­tor of Se­cu­rity Business Unit Comexposium “There has been a re­duc­tion in the crime rate in Mex­ico City by 23% in the last three years and the re­sponse time was re­duced from 12 min­utes to 4 min­utes and 30 seconds. The num­ber of ve­hi­cle thefts was re­duced by half and the op­er­a­tional ef­fi­ciency of the law-enforcment au­thor­i­ties has in­creased by 19.1% dur­ing the same pe­riod.”

DO­MINIQUE GAIARDO Vice Pres­i­dent and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Thales Group

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