A call has gone out to Bahraini institutions and companies to transform their business models and strengthen their cybersecurity infrastructure in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
Internet hackers seek to exploit remote working conditions. E-mails, video conferencing and other technologies are increasingly being used in electronic fraud, information and data theft and extortion, said Yaqoob Al Awadhi, chief executive of NGN, a full-fledged systems integrator and IT consultant headquartered in Bahrain.
“Technology helps in dealing with the coronavirus crisis, and support us to overcome it. This means that cybersecurity is more important than ever, and with the increased use of technology, there are alternative ways attackers can use to harm the users.
“Most companies work to change the way they run their business, and the cybersecurity transformation was the main activity that companies started directly on executing, to cater for allowing the data access and as part of the digital transformation that the organisations were forced to go through in a short time,” Mr Al Awadhi said.
“We have seen three main activities start from infrastructure transformation, by leveraging cloud solutions and more efficient tools to ensure higher availability of information and more reliable platforms with less headache to manage workforce transformation, by allowing remote access and activities.”
He stressed the importance of developing new measures to assess efficiency of managers, utilising the new communication tools and information exchange security transformation, as a result of providing data and services availability and data integrity, and allowing authorised users and customers to access data and services 24/7 and being agile to provision more services online within acceptable time to go to market, without compromising and risking the security standards.
NGN director of business development Hassan Kassab stressed that the company responded to the market and new customers’ demands and began to think differently, by utilising new tools and services like SOC services, Red Teaming, penetration testing, and many tools and services.
“We at NGN believe that advanced cybersecurity is not a luxury anymore, it’s a main factor that assures the continuity, profitability and competency of any organisation. We help our customers in delivering this through our security and consultancy services portfolio. Also leveraging new technologies such as robotics and RPA is the main initiative in this era that ensures business continuity without full dependency on human factor or being available in the offices.”
He pointed to many warnings issued by the national centres for cybersecurity in several countries regarding the increase in piracy and electronic fraud, in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. These warnings came after many studies indicated that companies and people believe that they were targeted by fraudulent e-mails to steal their money, data, or extort them.