The giants of the Defense Industry gathered at SEDEC 2018 held at Congresium Ankara. The program highlighted the importance of domestic and national production for the security of countries.
Under the theme of “Border and Homeland Security,” the event organized for the first time in Turkey this year by the Presidency of Defense Industry (SSB) in collaboration with the Defense and Aviation Industry Exporters' Association and hosted by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce was attended by SSB Deputy Undersecretary Celal Sami Tüfekçi, Deputy Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communication Galip Zerey, Chairman of the Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK) Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan, Chairman of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce Gürsel Baran, Chairman of Ankara TEKNOKENT Hasan Gültekin, Chairman of the Board of Teknopark Ankara Hasan Gültekin, executives from leading defense industry companies such as TAI, ASELSAN, TUSAŞ, military officials, and numerous domestic and foreign guests.
BTK Chairman Dr. Ömer Fatih Sayan, who emphasized the importance of the program in bringing together the stakeholders of the defense industry, stated: “In our country, especially in recent years, significant breakthroughs have been achieved in domestic and national technology production through the efforts of many institutions and organizations. In this context, visible domestic and national production breakthroughs have been made in the defense industry as well. These developments have not only met our country's needs but also paved the way for the development of important products exported to many countries. Just like in almost every field, information and communication technologies are intensively used in defense industry products. In other words, the intersection points of information and communication technologies with the defense industry are increasing.”
Innovative Products Are Produced Thanks to IT
Reminding that innovative products can be developed thanks to the opportunities provided by information and communication technologies, Chairman Sayan said, “We also know that technology-intensive solutions are increasingly exposed to cyber threats in terms of both number and quality today. While developing solutions used for ensuring national security, the security of products and production processes must be prioritized. Security should be an integral part of the process at every stage, from design to production and modernization. Globally, especially in developed and developing countries, individuals, companies, critical infrastructures, and states are under serious cyber threats. Ensuring cyber security is no longer just a need to eliminate dangers in areas where technology is intensively used. Due to interconnected risks in social and economic life, cyber security is a part of National Security and a major factor affecting the welfare of nations. As you know, in most countries, cyberspace is now considered a military theater of operations alongside land, sea, air, and space.”
While we need to think about how new technologies will make our lives easier and how to make these technologies more accessible on one hand, Sayan underlined that the security of these new technologies is also an important issue on the other hand, drew attention to the rapid development in the electronic communications sector, and shared some data with the participants: “At the end of the first quarter of 2018, the number of mobile subscribers in our country reached 78.9 million, with a mobile penetration rate of 97.7%. Of these subscribers, 66.8 million are 4.5G subscribers. The number of active 4.5G subscribers with compatible devices and SIM cards is 33.9 million. The number of machine-to-machine communication subscribers, which is an important indicator of digital transformation, is approximately 4.7 million. Our total broadband subscriber count is 70 million, of which 57.7 million are mobile subscribers. The average monthly internet usage of mobile subscribers is 3.7 GB, while for 4.5G subscribers, this figure is 6.3 GB. Fixed broadband subscribers' average monthly internet usage in the first quarter of 2018 was 87.4 GB. Our total fiber network has exceeded 330 thousand km, and our total fiber internet subscriber count is approaching 2.5 million.”
USOM is Increasing Its Effectiveness
Stating that while fulfilling its regulatory duties towards the electronic communications sector to develop further, BTK is also continuing its activities to ensure national cyber security as per the duties and responsibilities assigned to the institution, Sayan said, “Our institution continues to carry out its cyber security-related duties at an increasing pace within the scope of the cyber security organization established in 2013. As a result of these efforts, the National Cyber Incident Response Center (USOM) has increased its effectiveness and risen to an important position in the cyber defense of our country's infrastructures in the last year, becoming almost a brand.”
Chairman Sayan also shared the following data about USOM: “It continues its activities to detect cyber threats early, prevent them, send alarms and warnings to relevant stakeholders, and ensure necessary measures are taken against related threats; in critical situations, it takes control of incidents with on-site intervention teams and provides national coordination across the country. Within these duties, USOM has established cyber threat detection and prevention systems, equipped its security operations center with malware analysis and digital forensics capabilities, and ensured the employment and training of expert personnel. Activities such as incident response, digital log examination, and penetration testing conducted by USOM personnel in numerous critical organizations continue.”
Stating that the most important element in ensuring national cyber security is the development and use of domestic and national solutions, Chairman Sayan said, “As BTK, while carrying out the activities assigned to us for ensuring our national cyber security, we develop projects worth millions of dollars with our own resources in the fight against cyber threats. These projects have created significant added value both materially and strategically for our country. We utilize our domestic and national applications based on machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, named KASIRGA, AVCI, and AZAD. These applications we have developed are used not only to prevent end-user victimizations but also to effectively detect cyber espionage attacks.”
Especially Our Defense Sector is the Target of Cyber Attackers
Chairman Sayan, who announced that vulnerabilities are detected by scanning publicly available internet sources, especially critical public institutions, stated in his speech, “In this context, detections related to more than 30,000 systems in the last year and measures to be taken have been shared with infrastructure operators and data center providers for the information of institutions and individuals. As a result of these efforts, more than 90 foreign-sourced BotNet command and control servers targeting individuals and institutions in our country have been detected and blocked, most of which have been neutralized through advanced security operations. In this regard, in two major attack campaigns uncovered within the scope of our recent USOM activities and operations, we have detected that our country, especially the defense sector, has become the target of cyber espionage activities.”
Expressing that analyses revealed that attacks containing advanced malware delivered via phishing as the initial attack vector, which current security products and devices do not recognize, aimed to take over target systems in subsequent stages, transmit information about target systems to attackers through various layers via command servers, and were designed to execute any command on target systems and steal potentially critical information, Sayan said, “In these attack campaigns detected by USOM early detection systems and operation teams, numerous institutions were targeted; in addition to analysis and blocking activities against the attacks, necessary measures at relevant institutions have been coordinated by our teams. In this sense, I want to emphasize that as our country's domestic and national production capacity increases and efforts in this direction intensify, we have become one of the important targets for cyber attacks. In this framework, along with the design security of products, I want to stress the importance of companies that execute projects, serve as main contractors or subcontractors for related products, taking necessary security measures, on this occasion.”
Emphasizing that one of USOM's most important activities is to convey the threats and vulnerabilities detected by advanced cyber security experts to relevant institutions along with measures to be taken, Sayan said, “Currently, USOM coordinates 2,463 cyber security experts in SOMEs of 995 institutions and organizations and provides real-time information on cyber threats (via the SIP-SOME Communication Platform). This number shows that the number of SOMEs in our country has doubled in the last two years. In 2017, official cyber security notifications were sent to nearly 1,550 Institutions/Organizations/Businesses. Also in 2017, 1,567 vulnerability notifications that needed to be addressed critically and urgently were sent to institutions and organizations; additionally, more than 1,500 vulnerabilities detected in internet-facing services of institutions and organizations were conveyed to the relevant parties along with measures to be taken.
21,080 malicious links (URL, IP, domain) used in malware and phishing were detected, checked, and blocked at the infrastructure level. To express USOM's increasing capacity by comparison with previous years, this figure was 490 up to the end of 2016; in 2017, the number of detected malicious links increased by approximately 16 times compared to the total of previous years. Thus, attacks on internet users and systems nationwide have been prevented.”
Touching on the issue that one of the most important problems in ensuring national cyber security is the shortage of trained human resources, Sayan said, “In this context, we must take the necessary steps quickly and train qualified experts to close the cyber security specialist gap in our country. As BTK-USOM, we are also conducting important studies on this matter and contributing to meeting the need for cyber security specialists in our country. Through BTK ACADEMY and USOM, we have provided cyber security training to more than 2,500 people in the last 2 years through trainings for SOMEs from various critical sectors such as health and energy, competitions and practical training for students and recent graduates interested in cyber security. Conducting trainings to address the cyber security specialist shortage in a more systematic and practical environment is also seen as an important need.
In this context, our efforts to establish the practical cyber security training laboratory named FETİH – Cyber Training Ground have reached the final stage. Also, we will start accepting the first participants of the FETİH cyber training laboratory, which we developed entirely with in-house resources, in the coming weeks,” he concluded his speech.
Topics such as “Border Security Technologies” and “Safe City” will be discussed at the 3-day event. Bilateral meetings will also take place throughout the program.