Santhosh V. Perumal

London has offered its expertise to Qatar in developing and implementing appropriate standards in cyber security, according to Conrad Prince, the UK’s Cyber Security Ambassador.
In this regard, he highlighted the Bank of England’s (BoE) ‘CBest’, a new framework to help identify areas where the financial sector could be vulnerable to sophisticated cyber-attack. It uses intelligence from government and accredited commercial providers to identify potential attackers to a particular financial institution. 
“The UK government, BoE and Crest are committed to working with Qatar to support the development and implementation of appropriate standards along similar lines to enhance the security of the sector,” Prince told the fourth annual information security conference, organised by the Qatar Central Bank.
The BoE has worked with the Council for Registered Ethical Security Testers (Crest), which represents the technical information security industry, and Digital Shadows, a cyber-intelligence company, to develop new accreditation standards.
Crest is a not-for-profit accreditation and certification body that represents and supports the technical information security market. It provides internationally recognised accreditations for organisations and individuals providing penetration testing, cyber incident response and threat intelligence services.
“This is one way how the UK and Qatar can work together to help improve our mutual protection in cyber security in the financial services sector,” Prince said, adding “I am really positive about the chance for Qatar and the UK to work together in this critical and essential cyber security.”
Highlighting that the Qatar-UK partnerships extend to several areas in the defence, security, education and economy, Prince said it’s really a critical relationship and “we are positioned to work ever more closely with Qatar to support national vision 2030.”
Stressing that the UK wants to be Qatar’s key partner in ensuring successful 2022 World Cup, particularly in infrastructure, event management and security, especially cyber security; he said the BoE has been working in multiple jurisdictions with a view to developing similar threat intelligence and lead penetration testing frameworks.
Financial services form a critical part in any nation’s financial infrastructure and protecting the sector from cyber-attack is core part of the UK’s national cyber security strategy, he said.