Expo 2020 Dubai goes Hi-Tech to Prevent Cyber Attacks

Expo 2020 Dubai has the world's most progressive cyber-security strategies set up to protect the super event from cyber-attacks, a high-ranking representative has said.

Eman Al Awadhi, Vice-President, Cyber Security, and Resilience at Expo 2020 Dubai, said the goal is to ensure the rambling site with all its foundation and advancements from unanticipated cyber-attacks.

“We are managing the convergence of information technology and operational technologies, while also ensuring preparedness from unforeseen cyber-threats. Therefore, our objective is to protect Expo’s infrastructure and operations — everything from ticket sales and AI-driven robots to virtual reality, mega screens and more, across the site,” Al Awadhi stated in an interview to Khaleej Times.

She said Expo 2020 Dubai is getting the most assorted and dynamic innovation ecosystem that is fit for supporting 200 or more members — including 191 nations, each with their own structure — just as organizations, multilateral associations, scholastic foundations, and a great many guests from around the globe. “As vice-president of Cyber Security, I am responsible for defining and implementing the most advanced cyber-security strategy ever seen at a world expo,” Al Awadhi said.

“Arguably, the biggest challenge of protecting and operating our 4.38sqkm smart site — which includes 130-plus buildings that are interconnected via the smart building management system — is done through new, innovative technologies that the world hasn’t seen before, while simultaneously managing a very complex digital infrastructure,” said the official.

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a soaring of cyber-attacks in the Middle East with people and organizations succumbing to hackers and fraudsters. Last year, the UAE saw a 250 percent ascend in cyber-attacks, as per the UAE head of Government Cyber Security.

As Dubai is getting ready to carry out the world's most prominent show in only three months, which is required to draw in 25 million guests during the half-year time frame between October 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, it is normal that digital crooks will be sneaking around. In any case, Expo 2020 Dubai is working with its technology accomplices Siemens, Accenture, Cisco, Etisalat, MasterCard, and SAP, and furthermore its authority network protection supplier, Digital14, “to deliver a safe, secure, connected site with smart infrastructure that will continue to offer benefits beyond the event”, said Al Awadhi.

The 130 or more designs at Expo 2020 Dubai are associated with smart structure advancements from Siemens', which is the exclusive infrastructure digitalization partner of the Expo.

It is constrained by MindSphere, a cloud-based Internet of Things Operating System, which is important for one of the world's biggest establishments of Siemens' smart building technologies.

Functions, for example, air cooling, air quality monitoring, energy use, alarms, lifts, and lighting will be ‘smart’, while the information gathered through MindSphere will assist with further developing energy productivity and boost wellbeing, security, and convenience.

“We’ve also spent the last three years planning with Digital 14, our cyber-security provider, on how to provide a seamless experience to all our visitors, whether they visit Expo physically or digitally,” said Al Awadhi.

Leaving a digital legacy Even after the Expo 2020 Dubai site is changed into District 2020, its digital infrastructure will give the tools to assemble the flexibility that cities of future need. All the technologies worked for Expo 2020 Dubai will stay in inheritance.

“This will serve as a lasting, measurable long-term legacy that will set a benchmark for future cities, not only for the country or region but for the world,” she said.

District 2020 will offer state-of-the-art empowering advancements like expanded reality, huge data, the Internet of Things, super quick web availability, and 5G portable organization. It will coordinate workplaces, private, social, social, and shared spaces to make a keen and economical local area; and it will unite Fortune 500 endeavors, SMEs, business visionaries, the scholarly world, R&D, gas pedals, funding, and hatcheries, furnishing them with a stage to team up and flourish, she said.

Expounding on the digital legacy Expo 2020 Dubai will abandon, Al Awadhi said Siemens has focused on setting up a worldwide co-ordinations base camp as a vital component of the site's inheritance. End, an expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), will set up its first base camp outside of China, just as an innovative work community. DP World will change its Flow Pavilion into perpetual personnel devoted to strategic greatness.

“In addition, we have integrated sustainability into all aspects of the event to create a meaningful impact that reaches beyond the site and beyond the six months of Expo 2020 Dubai. This offers a model of how to successfully build a sustainable smart city — something that could be replicated anywhere in the world,” said the official.