Etisalat raises awareness about Cyber Attacks at Cybercrimes Conference

The conference was organized by College of Law in Sharjah University in collaboration with General Information Authority and Judicial Studies & Training Institute.

The presentation by Rashed Al Abbar , eSecurity Product Manager, Etisalat highlighted the change in hacker mentality to a more profit based one. The presentation also gave participants insights on the various techniques from malicious code for sale, harvesting and phishing techniques to presenting solutions to combat some of these emerging threats in the UAE.

Rashed informed delegates about the shift in focus for attackers wherein they now target normal users who are less aware and therefore less secure. Participants also viewed a video featuring Kevin Mitnick, a well known ex-hacker talking about his motives behind hacking which highlighted the change in mindset from 1995 to the present. Malicious code for bots, backdoors, key loggers, and rootkits, which give control of mass systems to attackers, are now being sold to spammers and aggressive advertisers for a high price.

The presentation also highlighted the practice of Phishing which refers to fraudulent spam emails and websites disguised as trusted brands intended to trick consumers into divulging personal and financial information, which is then used for identity and financial theft.

Elaborating on ways to combat cyber crimes, including Phishing, Rashed advised several measures such as raising general awareness among Internet users and corporate users, Country-wide policies and countermeasures such as Central Bank policy for two-factor authentication and blocking at an ISP level through a Proxy server.

Rashed cautioned users to monitor potentially malicious activity, authenticate email messages, detect unauthorized use of trademarks, logos and other proprietary imagery, improve security patching infrastructure to increase resistance to malware and the use of PKI Digital Certificates as techniques to reduce the overall risk in cyber attacks.

According to Rashed, "Etisalat has played a very active role in combating cyber attacks at various levels through raising awareness by participating in industry events, involvement in developing eSecurity laws in the UAE, use of proxy filter and co-operation with law enforcement agencies to combat cybercrimes."

Etisalat 's Enterprise eSecurity Services currently help organisations across the UAE secure their infrastructure through PKI services, vulnerability assessment, managed security services and compliance management with standards like ISO 27001.