ComGuard, a distributor for IT security products and solutions in the Middle East and North Africa region supported the Third Annual Undergraduate Research Conference on Applied Computing (URC 2011) organized recently by Zayed University, Dubai.
The Third Annual Undergraduate Research Conference on Applied Computing (URC 2011) was inaugurated by His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan Mabarak Al Nahyan is the President of Zayed University, and also the Chancellor of the UAE University and the Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology.
In the keynote speech, His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan Mabarak Al Nahyan stressed the importance of research, development, and innovation in building a knowledge-based economy. He encouraged the efforts of Zayed University to be at forefront of research programs and appreciated the initiatives such as doctorate programs and research conferences.
ComGuard ran several programs along with its partners during the course of the Conference. As a pre-runner to the URC 2011, Zayed University organised awareness and training at the Dubai Campus, just few days before the main conference, which was supported by both ComGuard and aeCERT. Eng. Ali Alamadi, incident handler & threat analyst, aeCERT delivered a presentation on Information Security and highlighted the “importance of information security awareness”. This was followed by a demo on hacking by Sanjeev Singh, CTO, ComGuard and he also made a presentation on some Hacking scenarios that was followed by a quiz on Hacking.
ComGuard in association with its sister company Spectrum and its partner Juniper Networks conducted a penetration testing competition on the second day of the conference. All the winners of this competition were awarded exciting gifts.
Comguard along with its partner EC Council, the leaders in information security training and certification addressed the queries on the career opportunities in the field of information security. Both ComGuard and EC-Council highlighted the dangers that hackers and intruders pose to the private electronic space of individuals and organisations to all the budding professionals.
Dr. Leon Jololian, Dean, College of Information Technology, Zayed University said, “Network security is an increasingly critical issue for the private and public sector as the number of malicious network attacks reaches new records. The Cyber Defense Competition co-organised by Zayed University and Juniper Networks with support from the EC-Council is designed to raise awareness about security among students. “
Students were advised to be security trained as most of the defense mechanisms stand no good unless the end user is aware of the possibilities and ways of them being affected in cyber space.
Kaspersky and Iolo the partners of ComGuard had a technical expert present at the venue to elaborate on the importance of maintaining a healthy computer and tools available to do so. In addition to this, Kaspersky Labs explained the audience the possible threats on computers and also shared tips to safeguard oneself from such threats.
Mohammad Mobasseri, Senior VP, ComGuard, said, “We feel extremely honoured to be part of such an initiative by Zayed University and it has been our endeavor to spread the awareness about IT security as well as provide best of breed solutions to tackle the growing menace of IT security. We would like to thank all his partners Spectrum, aeCERT, Juniper Networks, EC-Council, Kaspersky Lab and iolo, whose association with us made it possible to be part of this wonderful initiative from Zayed University’s College of Information Technology (CIT).”
The 2-day conference was attended by over 400 specialists, experts and university students from across Middle East region. More than 120 research projects were presented in oral and poster formats from academic institutions in the GCC and other Arab countries including, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine.
