Scope of work

The center plans to concentrate on three main areas: Research & Development, Consultation, and Education. Each division will have its own leader and team and all of them will complement each other for smooth and well-organized running of the center towards achieving the common goals.

 

The philosophy

After surveying the status and pace of research in Saudi Arabia, we have found that the interest in research is not high for different reasons that can be summarized in three main categories:

• Low incentives and funds for research.
• Insufficient research supporting staff and infrastructure.
• Lack of links between researcher and industry and poor marketing.

Thus, COEIA will effectively tackle these obstacles and boost the overall research and development in information assurance. The philosophy behind running the center is summarized as follows:

 

 

The philosophy is based on three pillars: Excellence, Knowledge Transfer and Collaboration. The significance of these pillars is highlighted below:

Excellence

As the name of the center implies, the output of the center must be highly ranked in parallel to a certain level of excellence with a keen ambition of reaching par excellence. However, achieving excellence is a highly challenging task, which requires creation of a suitable environment to attract, harbor and sustain excellent personnel (employees) for executing long-term policies. Today the demand for IT people in Saudi Arabia and other regions of the world is much higher than their availability rendering quick transitions of IT professionals from one company to the other for better incentives. Thus owing to scarcity of experts, competitive salaries and benefits are provided to ensure sustained services from highly competent and dedicated researchers in the field of IT, particularly in the specialty of information assurance.

Having the pledge of building and maintaining excellence activities in the center, we specifically recruit top-notch professionals and well-established researchers in information assurance. We intend to meet this challenge by three solutions:

• Running the center with enough flexibility with regard to financial and human resources by law, but with proper control and accountability. Thus, having its own laws and regulations approved by the university.
• Offer lucrative compensation for the center’s employees above the market average.
• Investing in new blood by providing them with proper training and environment, in addition to taking advantage of the current and visiting experts in the center.

 

Knowledge Transfer

It is an obligation on the center to further transfer the knowledge and encourage its dissemination. The center will try to achieve this by the following:

• Holding or participating in public events such as national/international conferences and workshops, or holding public meetings for interested individuals and organizations to discuss hot topics and encourage networking people and organizations to transfer the knowledge.
• Providing consultation to individuals and organizations in the field of information assurance, trying to provide best practices and recommendations.
• Encouraging and playing an active role in teaching information assurance at the higher education level and incorporating important parts of information assurance in the general education textbooks for the younger generation.
• Running awareness campaigns about information assurance in different levels and channels such as posters, screensaver, brochure, books, radio, TV, workshops, executive awareness sessions, etc.
• Offering world-class training to individuals who would like to change their career to information assurance, and to those who would like to be more competent in information assurance. The center aims at cooperating with leading institutes and/or instructors.

 

Collaboration

For a strong and optimized development, the center aims at collaborate with different bodies, such as research centers, universities, government and industry either local or international. The goals of this collaboration are as follows:

• To start from where others have reached.
• Learn from others’ faults and successes.
• Providing excellent research, services and products.
• Working on people/organization needs.

 

Overlap

Overlapping these pillars result in five outputs:

• Discovering talents and encouraging them.
• Tackle all the real problems of industry or government rather than focusing on less important or individualized problems.
• Encouraging research and development in information assurance and be a competent and trustworthy center specialized in information assurance.
• Offering Master Degree and Diploma in information assurance in collaboration with other leading institutes and universities around the world.