Page 141 - SAMENA Trends - June-July 2020

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

educational applications and collaborative platforms, ensuring and circulate guidelines and policies on how to securely deploy
e-learning and knowledge sharing through this phase of home- and use collaboration tools. In its effort to encourage people to
based schooling. The company’s services will be available to stay at home and practice social distancing, the TRA announced
users free of charge. Parents of students of determination were a list of purchasing apps used in the UAE for consumers to use
exempted from paying applications fees. The TRA has also instead of physically performing daily grocery shopping. The TRA
cooperated with telecommunications operators to provide a updates the list on a regular basis based on market developments.
package of data needed to access the distance learning feature for The online stores included in the list include large shopping
families without home internet, free of charge. The TRA instructed centers and cooperatives, in addition to grocery stores, meat and
the telecom licensees in the country to suspend deactivating vegetable shops, and other services. (June 22, 2020) wam.ae
the mobile services due to documents expiry. This is in line with
the government initiative to enable work from home and distant The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, TRA, has
learning. TRA also increased the speed of fixed broadband to published the monthly report on Cybersecurity developments in
100 Mbps, to secure high internet speeds that ensure smooth the Federal Government of the United Arab Emirates for the month
running of online work and distance learning, as well as ensuring of May 2020, on its website. The report reviewed the efforts made
the best quality of video and voice calls and sharing files online. by the National Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT) to
To facilitate a smooth experience of distant learning and remote prevent and address cyber-attacks that were experienced by the
working and due to the significant changes to the demand for UAE federal entities only. The team responded to approximately
telecommunications services and the usual telecommunications 77,000 cyber-attacks, during the month of May, varied between
traffic flows, the TRA urged service providers to enhance its malware (70 percent), vulnerabilities (22 percent) and phishing
network capacity, perform network re-engineering when required, attacks (8 percent). The team also handled 285 cyber incidents.
and to implement any necessary changes as soon as practicable The Computer Emergency Response Team was established by
in order to facilitate the success of distance learning and remote Resolution 5/89 of 2008 issued by the Ministerial Council for
working. In order to support federal government entities within the Services. The team was established to improve practices of
UAE to enable them to work from home, the TRA has assisted by: information security, and protect the IT infrastructure in the UAE
Provide suite of services to enable government entities to work from risks and violations, in conformity with the TRA strategy
from home including collaboration, video conferencing tools and that aims at supporting and ensuring a safer cyberspace for the
cloud services; Increase the infrastructure capacities and Create residents of the UAE. (June 3, 2020) zawya.com

141 JUNE-JULY 2020