DarkMatter CEO Faisal Al Bannai is a featured speaker at the prestigious .GOV Awards here. During his featured talk at the forthcoming .Gov Awards gala event taking place on May 18, Al Bannai will emphasize the absolute necessity for robust cyber security defenses in order to permit the normal functioning and ultimate prosperity of nations, businesses and individuals. DarkMatter, an international cyber security firm headquartered in the UAE, will be addressing the requirement to add resilience to digital infrastructure in order for Dubai to achieve the ambition of becoming the smartest city in the world by 2017. The awards are designed to recognize best practice in smart government and the .Gov publication aims to provide its readers with both the inspiration and information they require to realize governments' vision of creating an e-society. The UAE has received global recognition for having cities that are amongst the 'smartest' in the world, and Dubai is seeking to become the smartest city on the planet by next year. What lies at the heart of this massive effort is the attainment of happiness for the country's citizens, residents and visitors and the role of the government in converting aspirations into actuality cannot be overstated. Digitization is a key enabler in achieving this goal and needs to be made resilient to cyber attack. According to Juniper Research, from 2013 to 2015 cyber crime costs quadrupled, and it is forecast there will be another quadrupling from 2015 to 2019. Last year the research company predicted that the rapid digitization of consumers' lives and enterprise records will increase the cost of data breaches to $2.1 trillion globally by 2019, increasing to almost four times the estimated cost of breaches in 2015. Al Bannai commented: "If information and data is the life-blood of modern, digitized societies, then government agencies and digital network infrastructure providers are its physicians and pharmacists. That is to say, we are very much the custodians of whether digitization may be used to uplift the quality of life for all stakeholders, or alternatively witness it resulting in a calamitous system failure that threatens our way of life." Al Bannai continued: "Given the central role played by digitization in delivering prosperity to modern societies, safeguarding this infrastructure and the data transmitted over it is one of the single most important undertakings of our time. An end-to-end, perpetual, pro-active, and informed approach to cyber security is imperative, and I am in no doubt that the key differentiator between cities and nations that succeed in the future compared to those that do not will be their level of cyber security resilience." DarkMatter is the founding Cyber Security Innovation Partner to the .Gov Awards, and is looking forward to recognizing and applauding the tireless efforts of innovative government entities and individuals within them to create and secure the digital platforms on which society may scale new heights. Already a trusted partner to the UAE government and other leading entities, DarkMatter is staffed by tier one international cyber experts who develop, manage and deploy the most innovative technologies. Solutions adhere to the company's Cyber Security Life-Cycle, which incorporates a four-stage approach involving planning, detection, protection and recovery, and reinforces its secure business solutions. DarkMatter is leveraging this experience in the wider market as it looks to serve regional and international clients. The company provides a complete portfolio of cyber security solutions and services to organizations that have sophisticated security requirements, from governments and infrastructure operators to large corporations. — SG
