Saudi SDAIA reveals foiling 2.37m cyberattacks targeting G20 platforms

RIYADH — The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) disclosed that it has repelled as many as 2,372,028 cyberattacks that targeted online portals of the Group Twenty summit, which concluded on Sunday. The authority has dealt with successfully a huge amount of cyber threats perpetrated by hackers from unnamed entities.

Eng. Hussam Al-Dhobyani, executive director of information security at SDAIA, said that these cyberattacks were repelled on Boroog, the government videoconference platform, through the special protection systems that it had developed, according to a report in the online newspaper “The Independent Arabia.”

He said the number of security alerts that were dealt through the Security Operations Center stood at 28 while the security incidents that occurred as a result of this type of attack was zero.

Al-Dhobyani declined to disclose the sources of the attack, but Riyadh used to point the finger of blame in this type of cyber sabotage to the Iranian regime, which was labeled as a “rogue" state.

Also, media affiliated with Qatar reportedly focused their negative propaganda against Saudi Arabia’s efforts to organize the G20 summit in an exceptional manner in an extremely complex circumstance brought about by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

A number of leaders who attended the summit expressed their appreciation of the Kingdom’s extraordinary effort in making the summit a resounding success, and they included Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ally of Doha.

Erdogan congratulated Riyadh for its success in leading the summit in the year of its presidency, before handing the presidency over to Italy on Sunday.

Riyadh does not deny that it has been exposed to security risks in the past, but Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman said in the context of his talk about his country’s achievements in recent years, that the Kingdom was able to contain terrorism after making major headway in combating it.

About a week before the summit, the Crown Prince noted that since restructuring the Ministry of Interior and reforming the security sector in mid-2017, the number of terrorist operations in Saudi Arabia has decreased to almost zero, with the exception of a few individual attempts.

SDAIA was successful in managing and operating Boroog for the coverage of G20 Summit. Boroog is a secure video conferencing platform managed and operated by SDAIA through one of its executive arms — the National Information Center.

It provides effective and efficient virtual meeting services for the Kingdom’s leadership and government entities. The platform also provides the highest levels of safety and reliability and helps to reduce operational costs and expenses. Boroog has already hosted more than 700 local and international meetings successfully.

The platform had successfully hosted the Extraordinary G20 Leaders’ Summit in the Kingdom last March and is also used to host meetings of the Cabinet, the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, Political and Security Affairs Council, Shoura Council, OPEC meetings, and several other sessions held by government and semi-government entities.

Boroog platform comes as a result of the efforts of the young highly qualified national cadres who work continuously to empower government entities through developing their remote communication with different local and international entities.