Information Technology Committee

• Electronic commerce - November 2000
• Senator stresses need for IT education - August 2000
• Fighting hackers - May 2000

Electronic commerce

Over the past years, the topic of electronic commerce has become a defining business strategy for a large number of companies in the United States and to a growing degree in Egypt. The use of e-commerce has proven to be a revolutionary tool for maximizing profit, reducing costs and enabling the timely execution of business transactions. To broaden the scope of e-commerce activities in Egypt, the AmCham Egypt Information Technology Committee held a one-day seminar on November 1, 2000, titled "Trading on the Internet," at the Cairo Marriott Hotel. The seminar highlighted how to access Egypt's legal and regulatory infrastructure to be e-commerce enabled for improved competitiveness in the global market.

Session One was first addressed by Mr. David Valdez and Ms. Wendy Lader from the U.S. National Telecommunications & Information Administration who outlined "Minimum regulatory and legal requirements in developing countries for e-commerce"' and "The National Telecommunications & Information Administration: What is it, and should Egypt have one?". Mr. Amr Abdel Motaal, senior partner at Abdel Motaal and Heiza Law Firm spoke about "The Egyptian case". In Session Two, "The current situation in Egypt" was discussed by Dr. Sherif Hashem, adviser to the minister of communications & information technology; Mr. Hisham Ezz El Arab, managing director, Commercial International Bank; and Mr. Mohamed El Nawawy, chairman, E-Commerce Committee, Internet Society. The closing remarks were addressed by Dr. Adel Danish, chairman of the Information Technology Committee and managing director, Standardata Egypt.

Presentations

• NTIA: What is it, and should Egypt have one? Wendy Lader, senior policy adviser, National Telecommunications & Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
  
• Global e-commerce David Valdez,  attorney adviser, National Telecommunications & Information Administration, Cairo, Egypt
  
• E-commerce in Egypt: Understanding the challenges Dr. Sherif Hashem, director, Information Society Development Office (ISDO), Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
  
• The legislative infrastructure for electronic commerce In Egypt Amr Z. A. Motaal, attorney at law
  

Top

Senator stresses need for IT education

The United States must accept more immigration by skilled technicians for its thriving information technology (IT) industry, said Senator Robert Bennet (Republican - Utah), addressing AmCham Egypt’s IT Committee on August 28. The only alternative, he said, would be for American companies to rely on contracting work out to foreign-based IT professionals, including those in Egypt.

"There are 400,000 high-tech job openings in the United States today," Bennet said. "Demand is increasing, and the only people who can fill these jobs will be foreign nationals. But immigration laws prevent this."

American high-tech firms, he added, "are fed up. They will send work to these people electronically if they have to – if a solution is not found."

For some developing countries, on the other hand, the field of IT represents the possibility of catching up with the developed world. But this cannot happen if governments remain complacent about nurturing human resources for the sector, the senator said. "The reality is that business is business. There’s a need to educate."

Bennett – who chairs the Senate’s Republican High-Tech Task Force – lauded recent efforts by the king of Jordan to prepare his country’s primary-school students for global competition, with English-language lessons introduced in the first grade and computers in the second.

For most of the session, Bennett answered questions from AmCham members concerning a wide range of IT-related issues, from the Microsoft case (he contended that the company was not a monopoly) to e-mail encryption to global Internet security. "You cannot have true international e-commerce without making information systems secure," he said.

Asked about last year’s Y2K scare, the senator agreed that the threat to the world’s computer systems had been overestimated, but added that counter-measures had provided a unique opportunity for thorough analysis of existing systems. "They did spend too much money on it," he said, "but the exercise was useful." Y2K preparations allowed analysts "to find where the holes were."

Bennet, a former businessman who entered the Senate in 1993, said that although he has no technical background in IT, one of his goals on Capitol Hill was "to inject practical knowledge into politics."

Top

Fighting hackers

The Information Technology Committee meeting on May 23 was chaired by Dr. Adel Danish at the AmCham Egypt premises. Guest speaker Mr. Alex Bogaerts, vice president for Europe, Middle East & Africa at Internet Security Systems, spoke about "Fighting hackers."

The discussion included the following topics: war on the Internet, vulnerability assessment and intrusion detection and the anatomy of an attack. The event closed with a question and answer session.

The speaker started by defining the problems of network security, which is one of the main business objectives of corporate portals. They either run on diverse systems or utilize Internet technologies. All software contains errors, weaknesses and vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. The forms of infrastructure security noted included: access control (in the form of routers and firewalls); authentication, known to most as the password; and thirdly, encryption (PKL and SSL).

Bogaerts related the vulnerabilities in network services as common software bugs, human errors and misconfiguration, enabled and disabled services, and susceptibility to denial of service attacks.

The speaker also discussed the process of hacking, getting and protecting a password, and the anatomy of an attack.

He stressed that e-commerce is a very important concept to modern companies and corporations, and therefore it will remain one of the largest categories of goods traded between businesses. Expected revenue is $395 billion in 2003.

During the question and answer session, the speaker elaborated on strategies for companies to protect themselves against hackers and attacks.

Top