Women in Cyber Fellowship programme empowers female cyber leaders

Regional News

Female cybersecurity leaders from the Gulf headed to the UK at the end of January as a part of a fellowship programme for insight into leading government, startup and industry cyber practices.

The FCDO and NCSC UK-Gulf Women In Cyber Fellowship programme was set up in order to support positive female role models, promote peer-to-peer learning and cross-country collaboration and strengthen UK-Gulf cooperation and partnerships.

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), innovation company Plexal and digital risk management consultancy Protection Group International (PGI) are all supporting and empowering female cyber security professionals through the fellowship programme.

Lindy Cameron, CEO at the National Cyber Security Centre, said: “The UK-Gulf Women in Cyber Fellowship is doing fantastic work nurturing diversity and ultimately building cyber resilience for our Gulf allies. At the NCSC we are committed to help increase female representation in the cyber security workforce, and we are extremely proud to support this fellowship.”

Saudi Arabia

Sawaher, a new online portal, is set to launch soon to ensure security control at the entrances to Makkah, Saudi Arabia, to identify people and vehicles. Security teams will be equipped with systems to detect wanted persons, as they travel by road. While posts to social media platforms will be analysed and linked to security command platforms.

Bahrain

Grant Thornton Bahrain’s Director for IT Advisory is warning companies that they need to strengthen privacy protection to stay protected against cyberattacks. Technology and cyberattacks are evolving and data is becoming more important to our daily lives.

Kuwait

From September, all public schools in Kuwait will be using fingerprint biometric systems to help identify violations, neglect and fraud amongst school officials. The project is being overseen by the Ministry of Education, who has already secured regulatory approval and selected the supplier.

Qatar

Qatar National Bank has rolled out contactless biometric payments for its customers, negating the need for a physical payment card or use of a smartphone. It’s the first bank in the country to use facial recognition technology by payments. It has been introduced in partnership with Visa, using the PopPay solution from PopID.