ITCN Asia IT & Telecom Show: IBA-CICT holds conference on social media threat protection

The Institute of Business Administration Centre for Information & Communication Technology (IBA-CICT) organized a conference titled "Social Media Threat Protection" in a three-day "18th ITCN Asia IT & Telecom Show" at the Expo Centre Karachi. The objective of the conference was to create awareness about the online threats by identifying threats that social media platforms are facing and strategies to mitigate them.
Delivering the welcome address of the conference, Director IBA-CICT, Imran Batada, talked about the need of policies addressing the usage of social media at the workplace. He also highlighted the issue of harassment and protection of passwords in order to secure individuals privacy online.
The panel discussion at the conference was moderated by CEO VCAST Online Mansoor Ali while the panelists included CEO Vsh News Ahmed Baloch, Executive Director iEARN-Pakistan Farah Kamal, CEO Bolo Bhi Fareiha Aziz and Senior Reporter The News International Waqar Bhatti. During the discussion Fareiha Aziz highlighted the importance of the issue and said, "This is a sheer irony that we live in a society where victim is always blamed. Therefore, change in attitude is required to combat the adverse online bullying."
She also shared information about how to secure social media accounts and what are the practical steps one should take in order to be safe online. "It's important to have different passwords for different accounts. These passwords must be of 13 random characters not dictionary words," she added. Executive Director iEarn-Pakistan Farah Kamal discussed the scope of social media. She said, "There's a difference between misinformation and disinformation. We are living in the era in which we are bombarded with information through social media and we need to be very careful when using this information."
CEO Vsh News Ahmed Baloch also elaborated the role of social media and said, "Social media has been playing tremendous role in making people politically active by making them aware of their surroundings. And in doing so, one needs to be careful while sharing information online."
The panel discussion was followed by a question and answer session. The session ended with a MoU signing ceremony between Director IBA - CICT Imran Batada and Vice President Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan Umair Nizam to retain IBA's status of knowledge partner to ITCN Asia 2019.
IBA Karachi has been playing a significant role in ITCN Asia Conferences as a Knowledge Partner for the past three years. Provincial Law Advisor Murtaza Wahab paid visit to the event. Imran Batada briefed him on the projects designed by IBA-CICT and the Centre has been engaged with several public sector departments in building the capacity of Sindh government employees.