IT Security professionals get valuable insights into best practices and technology solutions at eSecurity Forum 2006

Speaking on the occasion, Abdulla Hashim, Assistant General Manager, eCompany said, "The current environment is hugely challenging for IT professionals with the constant threat of cybercrime and increasingly sophisticated methods of compromising IT systems."

"Moreover, emerging trends in information security have changed the practice from one of technical security controls to a concern for overall risk management, which shifts information security from a strictly IT focus to a business practice issue. Etisalat with its strong solutions portfolio and partnerships is uniquely positioned to address the IT security needs of companies in the UAE and the region in the current environment. Events like these are crucial to give industry professionals the edge they need to manage with the growing sophistication of security threats."

Khalfan Al Mazrouei, IT Manager, ADSM (Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange) talked about the importance of adopting international IT security standards in UAE financial markets. In his address he talked about the ADSM's initiative to adopt an international standard (ISO 17799) of IT security to ensure ADSM's trading environment is as secure as possible. Following this standard will help ADSM to confidently manage the growth in connections with other stock exchanges, such as Muscat and Doha, and the broker community. He said this was part of ADSM's compliance with relevant international standards and this is an integral part of ADSM's international best practices programme as part of which eCompany and Cybertrust had conducted a six month ISSA ( Information System Security Auditing ) for ADSM.

The complexity facing IT security professionals was echoed by Rashed Al Abbar, Product Manager, eSecurity, eCompany . He talked about the challenges of dealing with multiple security needs, multiple vendors and complexity of Security Integration. In such an environment , eCompany can play a crucial role in helping companies considering its track record as a regional Pioneer in PKI services, capabilities of a experienced security team, leading edge Security Operations Center & Network Operations Center all of which is backed by Etisalat's formidable technical resources.

Leif Kremko, Security Engineer, Qualys Technologies the leading provider of on demand vulnerability management highlighted the nature of threats depending on their level of sophistication. He said the nature of vulnerabilities were changing from server to client applications with more than 60% of new critical vulnerabilities in client applications like web browsers, Backup Software, Media Player, Antivirus Software, Flash etc. He spoke about the need for raising awareness, prioritizing vulnerabilities and proactive security enforcement to shorten the time period for critical vulnerabilities by 20 % in 2006.

Raza Sharif, Principal Consultant, Cybertrust Professional Services in his presentation talked about security standards and compliance and how organizations can gain competitive advantage by adopting standards like ISO 27001 and BS 7799 .

A wireless hacking demonstration was also carried out during the forum by Cybertrust where a full assault was replicated on a wireless access point and wireless infrastructure in terms of denial of service attacks against wireless and WEP(Wired Equivalent Privacy) breaking techniques.

Tayseer A. Hasan, Senior Engineer, Security planning , Etisalat spoke about Enterprise Security Management and trends. He said businesses were increasingly looking at partnering with a managed security services provider for internal and external reasons. Internal reasons could be time to market pressures, cost constraints and external reasons could be global competition, rapid change in technology, business process change and government regulations.