TRA Participates in Abu Dhabi Women College IT Event

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), represented by the National Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT), a TRA initiative, participated in Abu Dhabi Women College ADWC – (Higher colleges of Technology) security awareness sessions. The event took place in the ADWC campus on April 3 and 14, offering the target audience from students a wide range of cyber security information.
Eng. Eman Al Awadhi, Network Security Engineer-aeCERT delivered a presentation discussing different types of online threats including password security, email security, instant messaging, protecting computer and mobile security.
The presentation offered in-depth information on how to create strong pass word, how to avoid and deal with spam e-mails, and suspected attachments. It also shed light on phishing as one of the oldest techniques for social engineering on Internet where Cyber criminals build trust by pretending to be something people we know, such as a bank.
H.E. Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, TRA Director General said: “We are delighted to further cooperate with the educational institutions. TRA has organized and participated in many activities during the last year and this year, at the current time we aim at creating a joint cooperation.”
Eman Al Awadhi explained another common attack using social engineering, infected attachments, which is used by cyber criminals to infect others PCs. Often these viruses are programmed to steal all logins and passwords whenever you authenticate. In addition, the viruses will often connect the infected computer to botnets.
The aeCERT team went further to demonstrate that any type of communications can be used for attacks, including Instant Messaging, pointing out that these attacks are usually not targeted. Cyber criminals simply send out millions of emails, or millions of instant messages, simply hoping to find someone who falls victim to their social engineering attacks. Cyber criminals employee sophisticated tools to automate these attacks, often using hacked computers to hack other computers, so there is almost no cost to the cyber-criminal.
The team went on to give attendees information on how to avoid attacks and protect their computers pointing out to the audience that smart phones, laptops, tablets and other new technologies are also susceptible to the same kind of attacks and viruses and how to safe guard them. They suggested the best practices is to use one of the brand name, well- known antivirus programs, be aware of fake antivirus programs, keep your antivirus program up-to-date and use tools from trusted sources. The team noted that with the current popularity of apps the same safety rules for downloading apply to avoid downloading a virus.