Nationals may soon replace Jordanian IT staff in Gulf

We all know that a considerable number of Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians and other Arab nationalities are working in the IT sector in Gulf States. Without their involvement, IT would not have grown as it has in the oil-rich Gulf which has always been lacking in human resources.

The relative technical-savvy of Jordanians, coupled with the large-scale IT projects in countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have provided a ‘marriage of convenience last’ for all parties involved, and the Jordanian economy has also benefited from these professionals’ income flowing back home.

The question has always been, how long will that last!

Surely, as Gulf nationals grow in numbers, and acquire technical degrees and skills, other Arab nationals will be in less demand. Or, at some point, a major shift in policy may occur due to a major event - such as the current global financial crisis. Already, international organizations are advocating this change, and predicting a shift sooner than later, mainly due to the recession.

The executive director of the research arm of the international business school, INSEAD, spoke recently about this saying that “countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar need to improve local skills to reap the full benefit of ICT investments in the region.”

This is part of the finding of the INSEAD and World Economic Forum annual report on Global Information Technology. The highest ranked Arab country in this report covering 134 countries happens to be the UAE at a respectable number 27- no surprises there.

It tops other MENA countries such as Qatar at 29- quite close behind- and Bahrain at 37, Tunisia at 38 and Saudi Arabia at 40 and Jordan, unfortunately, is at number 44.

Anyway, the point is that the Middle East is one the fastest regions across all regions in the world to move up in the “e-readiness rankings”, but Gulf countries have a relatively small population and rely on external expertise to drive ICT unlike other countries.

Therefore, experts see the key to the future of ICT growth in Gulf States is the ability to develop local skills; which means a need to see more engineers, programmers, architects and managers who are Emarati, Qatari, Saudi and so on. At the moment, it appears Gulf nationals do not lean significantly towards these scientific and technical professions. That, of course, could change. As leadership in the Gulf begins to ‘absorb’ these recommendations, things may change.

As lay-offs begin, the last last staff to be laid off will be nationals. So, in some ways, the recession may speed up this whole process. Perhaps it is time for authorities in Jordan to start planning for this change. If you’re an IT professional in the Gulf, beware!

zanasser@gmail.com

97 percent of email is classified as ‘unwanted’

It’s been reported before, but the numbers are just not decreasing! Spam and ‘unwanted’ email continue to constitute an amazing 97 percent of all email circulating around the world. Imagine how much more efficient email services would be without this load!

These findings come from a new security intelligence report by Microsoft, which looked at online activity during the second half of 2008, and suggests that these unwanted messages are either spam, have malicious attachments or are used as phishing baits by cyber-criminals to steal valuable information such as credit cards, user IDs and passwords.

While most modern email and instant messaging programs are configured to block the transmission of potentially dangerous files by extension, attackers are now using common and less threatening file formats such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf). These formats are used legitimately by people every day and can’t be blocked, making them an attractive target for malware creators.

More than 91 percent of attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office were using security holes that had been plugged by updates that had been available for more than two years. Attacks using PDF files rose sharply in the second half of 2008, the report noted.

Part of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report also examines security breach incidents around the world and finds that stolen equipment, such as laptops, is the most common reason for data loss, coming in at 50 percent of data loss occurrences. That is even higher than security breaches caused by hacking or malware, which are only responsible for 20 percent of all data loss.

The report also pinpoints the countries that are suffering from the most infections of malicious software, or malware. Russia and Brazil top the global chart of infections, followed by Turkey and Serbia and Montenegro.

Apparently, the type of malware varies from country to country. In China, several malicious web browser modifiers are common, while in Brazil, malware that targets users of online banks is more widespread. In Korea, viruses such as Win32/Virut and Win32/Parite are common.

It’s a cat and mouse chase, as criminals keep coming up with ways around anti-virus and network security software. You need to protect your PC, but watchhout!
Apparently, criminals are also putting out ‘scareware’, which are fake security programs that falsely tell to install software to protect your PC from an attack; but scareware actually steals personal details!

Where will all this end? Rest assured that it won’t, so educate yourself and be suspicious of all emails you get. Better safe than sorry.

zanasser@gmail.com