The biggest threat facing modern societies nowadays is to get integrated into the digital economy and have access to the huge opportunities it offers, while protecting themselves against ever-growing threats due to the ability of criminal organizations and numerous bodies to penetrate digital systems, steal information and embezzle funds, thus making the international economy incur losses of trillions of dollars annually.

Since the Lebanese economy’s institutions are directly concerned with such an increasing threat, and in order to raise the public and private sectors’ awareness of the necessity to fight cybercrimes and develop digital security’s strategies, Al-Iktissad Wal-Aamal Group in collaboration with the Special Investigation Commission of the Central Bank of Lebanon and the Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Bureau of the Directorate General of the Internal Security Forces, organized the 3rd Anti-Cybercrime Forum under the patronage of His Excellency the Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, Mr. Riad Salame, on the 29th of November 2017, at Phoenicia Hotel, in Beirut.

This important event was held following the resounding success of the previous two editions. The 3^rd edition hosted a vast number of local and international experts from banks, security services, legal instances, solutions’ and technical protection systems’ providers who shared their experience and practical approaches as to cybercrimes and digital security with the participants, banks, companies and governmental bodies and stakeholders having to deal with such a critical matter. 

Needless to say that criminal organizations are constantly looking for weaknesses in operating systems and digital protection systems; and so they specifically target governments and their institutions as well as banks, companies and individuals while taking advantage of the dangerous technical and operational gaps, as administrations fail to realize the size of their exposure, which is often due to a lack of assessment and regular testing of the protection systems’ efficiency; consequently, the digital security topic should be a top priority on the agenda of governments and institutions. It should be handled with a proactive dynamic in such a way as to promptly keep pace with the ongoing advances in hacking techniques and arsenal of international gangs.