UAE’s education community gets insight into latest e-security developments

Dubai, UAE, 1^st July 2003

Comtrust, the e-solutions business unit of Etisalat, recently held a complimentary training session at the Etisalat Academy in Dubai. The three-day seminar offered the UAE’s higher education community, including representatives from Zayed University, UAE University and the Ajman University of Science and Technology, a unique insight into the regional development of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

Comtrust says it held the course to ensure both students and teachers of university IT faculties were aware of the region’s recent e-security developments. “This is a clear example of our commitment to help the UAE’s educational institutions develop local talent, ensuring they are armed with a skills set and knowledge base comparable with any country in the world,” said Ahmad Abdulkarim Julfar, General Manager, Comtrust. “As a regional leader in e-enabling services, Comtrust is perfectly poised to offer Universities a unique insight into the latest e-business developments and how they translate to the business norms of the Middle East region.”

According to Comtrust the session was based upon Comtrust’s recently launched commercial PKI training courses, but where tailored to the specific needs of the education segment. “In the training we covered the subjects such as Internet security issues; an understanding of PKI itself; an overview of various encryption mechanisms and we reviewed the entire digital certification process including Comtrust’s responsibilities as the Certification Authority. However, we took more of a holistic approach, illustrating the benefits this technology will bring to region rather than concentrating on the specifics, which would be required for implementation in a commercial environment,” said Julfar.

Both students and lecturers benefited from the event, which was welcomed by the universities. “Since Comtrust is a pioneer when it comes to this technology, I think it was an excellent idea from Comtrust to make us ‘universities’ aware of the latest developments,” said Abraham Ahmad, Network Manager, Ajman University of Science and Technology. “I hope in the future Comtrust will always be in touch with us so we can have a good partnership with them.”

PKI, according to Comtrust, is the globally recognized, industry standard protocol to Internet security threats. PKI seeks to replicate the security measures of the physical world within the virtual world of the Internet. It is a comprehensive system consisting of software applications, encryption methods and technologies designed to ensure the identification and authentication of all parties involved in a single online transaction. “Security is the number one concern of those partaking in e-commerce. We make sure that there is no stone left unturned to secure the information conduits, the access points and the networks,” said Julfar.

“Authentication was the last piece of the security puzzle. PKI ensures users can have complete confidence in the identity of transacting parties. It is a major development in online communication and as such we felt duty bound to illustrate these developments to both the educators and students of the UAE,” explained Julfar.

The complimentary course for universities, says Comtrust, is part of its corporate responsibility to the community. “We wish to ensure we live up to our responsibilities as good corporate citizens. We believe that we can go a long way to meeting this, by utilizing our resources, our knowledge, our expertise and our experience towards the development of tomorrow’s technology leaders,” said Julfar.