Oman, represented by the Information Technology Authority (ITA), signed an agreement with the World Economic Forum at the ITA premises in KOM.
It aims to explore opportunities for building a non-exclusive collaboration towards promoting cybersecurity, increasing cyber capacities and identifying potential cooperation in projects and initiatives to mitigate cyber threats, including, but not limited to, cyber security capacity building and workforce development, cyber threat early warning, CERT/CSIRT implementations, global cyber network for response and cyber security of the Internet-of-Things.
The deal was signed by Dr. Salim Sultan Al Ruzaiqi, CEO of ITA, and Troels Oerting, Head of Global Centre for Cybersecurity, (GCC), at the World Economic Forum.
“Through this agreement, we seek to strengthen cooperation between the Sultanate and the World Economic Forum in the field of cybersecurity. We hope that the agreement will contribute to enhancing the role of the Sultanate as a developed country in the field of cybersecurity readiness as we are ranked first in the Arab world and fourth worldwide. The Sultanate is playing a major role in helping other countries build their capabilities to face cyber threats and risks. The agreement will also provide investment opportunities for local and international companies working in cybersecurity,” said Al Ruzaiqi.
On the signing agreement, Oerting, said: “I think cybersecurity is the most important thing these days where we transform the whole world in a digital way, so we simply connect all physical equipment to the digital world and the cloud — for that, security is needed. I am very grateful today that we have signed an MoU agreement with the government of Oman and the ITA in order to enhance our cooperation on how to protect the innocent users of the internet against becoming victims. The only way we can do that is by working together.
“By working with Oman, we also get access to many other countries in the region and over the globe because Oman is known as the Switzerland of the Middle East for its neutral role. I have also been impressed with the expertise of this country with regard to cybersecurity; so we are looking forward to generating big projects together and to improving security not just for Oman but also for everybody else in the world.”