IT Webinars for External Society

To provide knowledge and information concerning the use of technology in various IT areas, IT Webinars for External Society were organised by the Information Technology Department of the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Ibri from 19 to 29 September 2020. The idea was initiated and monitored by Ms Nasim Al Balushi, Coordinator for Networking and Information Security Programs at UTAS Ibri. The webinars were delivered by the faculty members of the Information Technology Department. 

The sessions covered contemporary and relevant topics such as Cybersecurity Essentials, Fundamental Principles of Information Security, Ethical Hacking, Online Learning and Critical Factors, Data Science, and IoT. 

The first webinar in the series was ‘Cyber Security Essentials’ by Mr Geogen George, Lecturer, Information Technology, on 19 September 2020. Mr Geogen initially made the audience aware of the basics of cybersecurity and terminologies used in the field. He then introduced the audience to basic digital wrongdoings/attacks and their predominance in our day to day lives while people leave their digital footprints when they transact online. He also cleared the myth created around these wrongdoers being portrayed as specialists or geniuses. He emphasised the growing security awareness in the public at large to learn the basics needed to fight cybercrimes. This workshop helped many to build up an understanding of cybercrime, security standards, advances, and strategies used to guard organisations as well as individuals. The seminar helped participants to better identify whether to seek a section level systems administration or security proficient job as a career option. 

Ms Wardah Al Majrafi, Lecturer, Math, delivered a webinar on 20 September 2020 on ‘Online Education and Critical Factors’. Ms Wardah discussed critical factors that affect online teaching and the need for effective use of technology for the same. She further discussed the roles of instructors and students in the active teaching-learning process. She highlighted the essential characteristics to be possessed by each role player in making the whole process more productive.

conducting exams on MoodleMs Nasim Al Balushi, Coordinator for Networking and Information Security Programs at UTAS Ibri delivered the next webinar on 21 September 2020 on the Internet of Things (IoT). The session was delivered in Arabic. She explained to the audience what IoT means and the reasons for its emergence and becoming the major technology in industrial revolution 4.0. She supported her explanation with example applications on how IoT works. She explained various components of typical IoT networks and discussed various projects students can take up related to IoT technology. She further discussed the various advantages and disadvantages of IoT. She concluded the session with a comment on how she sees a future of IoT in Oman.

Ms Fatma Al Mandhari, Lecturer, Information Technology, delivered the next seminar on the ‘Fundamental principles of Information Security’ on 22 September 2020. The webinar discussed the importance of successfully implementing Information Security in any system. It mainly focussed on how to keep sensitive information as safe as possible from unauthorised access. Moreover, two categories of Information Security principles, core and supplementary, were explored in the webinar. The core principles such as integrity and availability are very important to keep security in the system by enabling advanced security tools such as firewall and antivirus programs. Further, supplementary principles such as authentication which is one of the most crucial steps to verify user’s identity before accessing the system, followed by authorisation where the distribution of the access rights is done, were also discussed.

The webinar on Introduction to Ethical Hacking was delivered by Dr Qais Saif Qassim, Lecturer, IT on 23 September 2020. Dr Qais started with an introduction to ethical hacking, what is it and what it is not. He discussed different phases in the process of ethical hacking viz. Information Gathering, Scanning, Vulnerability Assessment, Exploitation, Post Exploitation, and Reporting. He further demonstrated all the phases one by one along with various tools available to carry out activities in that phase with the help of his findings using screenshots. He touched upon almost all tools that are readily available and popular among practitioners. Dr Qais also cautioned participants about what they should not do and informed them about the Sultanate of Oman’s cybercrime laws. All-in-all it was a comprehensive introductory workshop for everyone.

conducting exams on Moodle 

The last in the series, ‘IT Webinar on Data Science’ was conducted on 29 September 2020. The webinar was delivered by Mr Mangesh Wanjari, Lecturer, Information Technology. The main goal of the webinar was to make participants aware of the Data Science field and a complete data science project life cycle. It was targeted to the students and faculty members who wish to learn about data science for research or as a career option. Mr Mangesh explained the different phases of a data science project with a hands-on demonstration of data acquisition, data access, data pre-processing and wrangling, feature extraction, training the machine learning model, testing the model for its accuracy, and visualisation of the results. 

 All the webinars were conducted using Microsoft Teams. It attracted more than 60 participants from students as well as the teaching community. Feedback was collected from participants at the end of each webinar. Most of the participants showed their satisfaction with what they learnt from webinars and arrangements in the conduction of webinars.