Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) College of Science and Engineering (CSE) hosted the new edition of its ICT Seminar Series, entitled Emerging Cyber Threats, recently.
Guest lecturer and academic Dr Saif al-Kuwari led the seminar, which discussed the benefits and threats that recent technological advances bring to modern states.
Addressing graduate students in the seminar, Dr al-Kuwari shared his research findings and shed light on the extensive role that technology plays in societies, national economies, education systems, healthcare facilities, and political arenas.
He concluded that while the dawn of the digital era had introduced dramatic improvements to the global standard of living, technology had paradoxically also ushered a new set of challenges and threats in the form of cybercrime.
To illustrate this, he utilised recent case studies to demonstrate how stealthily cyberattacks may be perpetrated, and the devastating political and economic impacts they carry at the individual, enterprise, and state-levels. He also summarised facets of the cyber security infrastructure to prevent future cyber threats. Dr Mounir Hamdi, dean of CSE, said, “Today, cybersecurity emerges as a top national security issue. It is also regarded as an economic priority, warranting a shift in our educational focus. Our nation’s youth – including the graduates we address here today at the ICT Seminar Series – are ‘digital natives’. They have never known a world where Internet and connectivity to cyberspace were not commonplace, and these technological threats affect them tremendously.”
Although not intrinsically linked to the cyberattacks in Qatar earlier this year, the seminar comes at a pivotal time for Qatar’s technological future. Increasingly, educational institutions in the country have placed newfound emphasis on ensuring that the next generation has a firm understanding of the implications of cyberattacks.
