Manama: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is establishing a Cybersecurity Centre that will be launched soon. However, no date was given.

“The driving force of the centre is to promote and develop cooperation among the OIC member states in order to prevent, combat and eradicate electronic terrorism in accordance with the principles set forth in the OIC Charter and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference Convention against International Terrorism, with full respect for the sovereignty of member states, the rule of law and the international law, including human rights law,” Wajdi Alqulit, the director of the OIC Information Technology department, said.

He was speaking at the Ninth Annual International Conference of the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation—Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT) under the theme “Uncovering Future Threats” in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

“We are all aware of the emergence and evolution of new and evolving methods and trends of international terrorism and violent extremism, in particular electronic terrorism and cybercrime, and we are all concerned about all of this,” he said.

The OIC General Secretariat reiterated its call to OIC member states that have not joined the OIC Emergency Response Team to do so quickly in order enable it to play a more concrete and effective role in addressing computer security issues.

Earlier this year a cyber security conference in Jeddah sounded the alarm over the need to combat cyber terrorism.

Experts reported an increasing number of cyber attacks on the Kingdom, which were blamed on Iran.

The Shamoon 2 virus reportedly disrupted Saudi labour ministry computers in January.

The Shamoon virus was first deployed against the Saudi energy sector in 2012.

After the 2012 Shamoon hacking, US intelligence officials said they suspected a link to Iran.

The conference, which is the second of its kind to be held in Riyadh, was attended by several international experts from governments, security bodies and companies specialising in information security protection.

Saudi Arabia’s National Cyber Security Centre has been set up over the past two years, but was only formally launched in the beginning of the year.

GCC members Bahrain and Kuwait were also the targets of increasing attacks over the past year, according to cyber security experts who added that both financial and government bodies have been targeted.