The Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) holds the 3rd Cyber Hawks meeting with the attendance and participation of more than 75 members of IT specialists who represent 40 government and semi-government entities.

On such occasion, Shaikh Salman bin Mohammed AlKhalifa - Acting Vice Chief Executive of Operations & Governance at iGA – stated that conducting such meeting reflects Authority’s efforts which aim at implementing Information Security policy at government entities and protecting infrastructure projects from any IT threats or cyber-attacks that may affect government systems. He continued that the Cyber Hawks initiative has succeeded in achieving its objectives during a short period of time. Since its launch in 2016, the initiative was able to enhance mechanism of organizing work amongst government entities and facilitated the exchange of security information which reduced security risks and raised the capacity of national cadres specialized in monitoring the network and leading it to explore security threats as well as addressing them in collaboration with iGA’s team.

The meeting discussed real-life experiences, in information security, that aim at increasing the knowledge of risks, prevention and method of best handling. Breakthrough attempts and prevention methods were also showcased as statistics indicated an average of 70% of cyber-attacks that target government entities via messages which seize emails. Public entities received more than 60 million infected emails seized and stopped by protection systems and programs available at the Authority. Additionally, nearly 50 Million attempts to exploit security flaws have been seized while addressing more than 2 Million malicious software after handling them; and more than 20,000 anonymous viruses of traditional protection systems.

In line with Authority’s continuous efforts to enhance security culture at government entities and amongst precautionary initiatives. During the meeting, the authority presented its efforts in the security awareness field as more than 1,400 employees were trained on key security awareness by presenting 30 lectures and workshops during 2018. This included training Authority’s employees and IT specialists in the government.

It is worthy to note that the launch of the ‘Cyber Hawks’ initiative comes in light of iGA’s efforts that seek to enhance the level of security for infrastructure, systems and government services in accordance to government direction and in line with its Work Plan that works towards raising the security level in Bahrain’s government sector.