Qatar's Investments In Cybersecurity Furthers Its Ranking: Expert

Doha, Qatar: Qatar is positioned among the top 30 countries in the cybersecurity field, due to high-investments. Globally, the country is ranked in 27th place, according to GCI, a measure developed by the International telecommunication Union (ITU) to assess countries' commitment to cybersecurity.

In an interview with The Peninsula, Marwan Zalloum, cyber lead for financial Services at KPMG Qatar, noted that the government is keen on investing in cybersecurity, eventuating on boosting its position to higher ranks globally.

“Qatar invests a lot in the sector to build from the government side, in order to provide a lot of support to enable cyber security. So it is an ongoing journey and it's improving and will grow even further in the future rankings,” he said.

During a recently held roundtable by KPMG in collaboration with Fortanix and Gulf IT, the officials stated Qatar's place includes reference to privacy and cybersecurity standards and the various dimensions and capacity of the government.

GCI ranks also state that Qatar is ranked in 5th place among the Arab States and has an overall 94.50 percent in the five ranking pillars.

Commenting on the cybersecurity roles among financial institutes, he said:“I think the banking sector is very critical and has the trust factor which needs to be established and needs to be demonstrated for its clients, so part of it is the ongoing efforts to prioritise the cyber security.”

He continued by saying“For each bank, the cybersecurity journey is different and you have separate concerns of priorities, but primarily being able to meet and the trust factor is to enable these ideas sources are very crucial for banks.”

Zalloum stressed that the improved governance will enable cybersecurity operations to be more effective, and automated and will also adopt artificial intelligence (AI) security dimension.

In terms of AI's contribution to the sector, he said“The technology will ensure that they have the right governance in place, either using it within the cybersecurity space to support them or to automate and enable them to respond faster.

However, on the other hand, he highlighted that it's also more about being aware of the risks of using AI within organisations.

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