In the presence of HE the Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti and other officials, the eighth National Cybersecurity Drill (STAR-8) was organised yesterday.
The exercise was in continuation of annual national cyber-drills that the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) Cybersecurity Sector has been conducting since 2013, with the aim of raising the preparedness and efficiency of national entities to address and handle cyber-attacks.
Held remotely in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s drill carried the theme Defending the Nation: Know Yourself.
The coronavirus causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
The drill covered topics on fundamental technologies such as the security-wise designing of technologies and the necessary protection mechanisms by modelling the cyber-threats that institutions encounter and, therefore, stopping them and helping the institutions to better understand to what extent their defences are ready to address lurking cyber-attacks.
This annual activity comes within the framework of achieving the objectives of the National Cybersecurity Strategy, in terms of improving and sharpening the national capacity, by qualifying the professional workforce in this domain and boosting cyber-attack response preparedness by detecting, investigating, managing, responding to and recovering from them.
This happens through co-operation, instant exchange of information, and deploying the appropriate measures.
“Cyber-drills aim to determine the cyber-security situation of organisations across the country and gauge their preparedness and maturity for protecting their electronic assets and their resilience to cyber-threats, as well as addressing any electronic security weaknesses,” said Acting Assistant Undersecretary of Cyber Security Affairs Othman Salem al-Hamoud.
“This year’s edition of the drill is the highest in terms of the number of participants,” he said. “More than 100 entities are represented by over 1,000 specialists. These entities relate to critical infrastructure sectors.”
“The increase is nearly 27% compared to last year’s drill,” he added.
STAR-8 featured diverse scenarios and exercise models, tailored and engineered by a team of experts from the MoTC’s Cybersecurity Sector to fit the requirements of the participating sectors.
Several important topics were covered, such as business continuity during the pandemic, with a special focus on the human element and its main role throughout this crisis.
“STAR-8 drill comes in continuation of a series of national cyber-defences that began in 2018 with STAR-6, themed Securing Major Events, and STAR-7, themed Know Your Adversaries,” said engineer Noora Yousef al-Abdulla, director of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Department, Cybersecurity Sector.
She said this year’s drill has two features: the first being focus on institutions assessing their own systems and defence capabilities based on concepts, exercises and techniques deployed in previous versions, and the full integration between the exercises and the technologies – an integration that was only partial in last year’s drill.
The second feature is conducting a national cyber-drill fully remotely, which is a valuable addition that could make it easier for the State and the critical entities in the future to handle any potential crises that could hamper the assembly in one place to manage cyber-crises.
STAR-8 was conducted via a special national cyber-drill platform accessible exclusively for participating entities with a direct, instant connection with the participating teams to answer any questions and resolve any technical glitches.
Qatar is one of the leading nations in national cyber-drills, recognised at several regional and international platforms.
Ahead of the drill, the MoTC Cybersecurity Sector last week held workshops and technical presentations for all participating entities, supporting them by enriching their knowledge on how to resolve the scenarios of the drill and to answer the relevant questions.
In a related context on the sidelines of the event, HE the Minister honoured the winners at the national level of the “Threat Hunters 2020 Competition” MoTC last August, which was organised in co-operation with the ITU-Arab Regional Cybersecurity Centre.