The Cyber Hero — SME Case Study (UAE)

In this case study, I am going to write about a great business that was an idea for the final graduation project at the Dubai Women College by Hessa Al Bloushi and Shamma Bin Hammad, which is called The Cyber Hero!

So, what is Cyber Hero? This is what you will be learning about in my case study. The main point is to support and motivate the student to think of entrepreneurship and learn from different ideas and creations in the country, especially in the UAE, which is one of the most supportive countries in the world, as it is trying to increase the number of entrepreneurs by providing them with many facilities to achieve success.

On the other hand, the number of entrepreneurs in any country in the world means that there is support The Cyber Hero and awareness. Without delivering knowledge and awareness to the nation, we will never improve or have an entrepreneur in the country. The most important point of increasing the number of entrepreneurs is improving business status by creating new business ideas which can make many things easier and increase the number of businesses.

Many people came with new ideas which were really a good product or service to the whole world, not only in the same country. Those kinds of people, some of them are fired for talking or sharing any idea due to many reasons. It could be because of personality, environment, low self-stem, or many other reasons, epecially for ladies in the Arab country, as most of them were following their culture rules.

So what’s the story of The Cyber Hero? How did Hessa and Shamma start? From where and who was supporting them?

Shamma and Hessa started this idea for their final graduation project and they didn’t accept that it wasn’t going to be a real project, and everyone will like it and support them. The Cyber Hero was presented at the Dubai Women College in 2019, to many doctors and governmental initiations like the Dubai Police and Dubai Immigration. They requested to have more information about The Cyber Hero and what the founders needed.

They were advising both of the founders to start working on this because they actually need this kind of awareness and security for children, students, employees, and the whole nation to protect them from many things that can affect their life, as they are helping many companies in providing a different kind of presentation.

Introduction to Cyber Hero Cyber Hero is an awareness and education platform to help the community avoid information security issues in the UAE by training them about potential threats to enterprise information and how to avoid situations that might put an organization’s data at risk.

The Cyber Hero’s main goal is to reduce the likelihood of attacks on the organization’s data, providing people or the trainers to take personal responsibility for protecting confidential information, and implementing the organization’s policies and procedures that will be based on relevant conditions and laws for data protection.

The Cyber Hero Background The idea was selected and launched in September 2019.

As the starting point for this project, both Bin Hamad and Albloushi were graduating from the information security college. They invested a lot of time in studying and researching information security awareness tools in the world in order to understand the main things, along with their knowledge from the university to develop and spread the awareness of cybersecurity to people.

Both of them started at the Dubai Men’s College in January 2020 by creating The Cyber Champion, which was information security in education by trying to let people know their most errors or mistakes in regards to information security. The solution focuses on the awareness part and offers many services, such as e-learning, to raise awareness of the importance of information security , live lectures, and awareness games. They also implement a secure exam hall application, which will give a high security policy to avoid fraud and maintain confidentiality.

The risk of human errors of information security is considered as the main reason for breaching security and leaking confidential data as it’s the reason for 90% of these incidents. Moreover, they are looking to enhance cybersecurity awareness for different target groups which leads to improving the security skills and capabilities of these people or groups in the society.

The most important and supportive point is that the Dubai Women College was supporting Heesa and Shamma financially and morally and in order to support the students with their great ideas, which had many good impacts on society. It provided them a place in the Dubai Men’s College to work on this project by also creating trade licenses for them, which shows great support, as Hessa mentions that DWC was the main sponsor for them from the beginning. The DWC was sending them to attend different training sessions in order to be aware about many important things for the business and not only that, they worked on their personalities by improving their communication skills, presentation skills, etc.

The women are receiving many orders with many different companies through LinkedIn or in their social media accounts requesting them to implement some product by adding new information, creating new presentations for them, signing contracts with some companies in order to deal and collaborate with them.

Depending on the companies orders, what I mean is providing them a different type of awareness according to their request and in the same circle of cybersecurity.

We strive to be a leading organization in the United Arab Emirates, committed to teaching students about growing risks.

Vision Enhance cybersecurity awareness for different target groups, which leads to improving the security skills and capabilities of these groups in society.

As mentioned by Hessa, their mission and vision is to create a good nation that is aware of the information system in order to reduce the number of human errors while also creating educated students with high awareness in technology and other things that might affect them.

The Cyber Hero Founders Shamma Bin Hammad Chief Executive Officer Hessa Al Balooshi Chief Security Officer Figure 38: The Founders of Cyber Hero During the COVID-19 Pandemic As mentioned by Hessa Al Bloushi, during COVID-19, the effect was positive due to all the student online classes and games being used during quarantine, and the founders started receiving many requests regarding how to make students aware while playing online or even using any social media platforms. Many topics were provided according to the school’s requirements and companies. In quarantines, many companies have been aware of The Cyber Hero, the Dubai Police, the Mohammed Bin Rashid School and it was honored two times by DWC with an innovation grant program in Dubai for 2020.

From my side, I can see that many people are using technology, but not all of them are aware of many things, even their families. Most of them provide the tools for the children without knowing how to protect yourself, your data, or at least to be aware of the main things in information security. It’s important during the pandemic or without. On the other hand, The Cyber Hero is considered as one of the smart businesses that can assist companies online through e-learning and virtual sessions.

Figure 39: An explainer chart of Cyber Hero’s services The Cyber Hero Product The Cyber Hero Provides multiple service as per the

following

¡ Educational Games ¡ E-Learning ¡ Lectures and a safe exam room All the above services help students to improve their skills and abilities in the field of cybersecurity.

1.

Regardiing the first service awareness games includes

three components which are

¡ The pre-test phase (registration + general question about information security) followed by the awareness games phase, and after the test (questions that assess how knowledge of information security has improved through the game).

¡ Students will participate in a series of educational games that will improve the acquisition of cybersecurity skills and capabilities.

¡ On this platform, they will provide an assessment system and post test stages, which will help them in identifying cybersecurity skills of the students after playing the games.

• E-learning process, which is considered one of the

smart and positive ways in learning that will help the learner to interact continuously through the free source software it contains and tools that require the learner to

perform various tasks and activities such as

¡ Answering certain questions.

¡ Sharing opinions on an issue or seeing new content in the lesson.

It provides e-learning services through information security awareness sections on several different topics to develop students’ knowledge.

The registration is available for all users though the website and the fees are different depending on the topic and the information, but they work on including the registration fees. The user is not able to share those documents, which is their right.

The awareness lectures include a direct explanation regarding security information and how to avoid cases of electronic breaches. On the other hand, the direct lectures have an effective impact in awareness, which creates an opening between employees with experts in information security and will spread the information in the culture. Face-to-face training lectures include many different categories in the organization such as the IT team, head of the department, CEOs, IT professionals, etc.

¡ The Cyber Hero team is working to develop a source exam room, which is a protected environment for exams within specific learning and evaluation systems. This can be used during online exams to switch applications, take screenshots, copy questions, or print, etc. This application can be used only with a specific system which will be generated by The Cyber Hero. Using this kind of application will lead to a strong generation that can be part of a nationwide cyber defined strategy.

The Cyber Hero business strategy is to have a website for everyone, including individuals, schools, and institutions, by registering first and taking the course. The course prices are not expensive at all. The course is AED 20, so everyone can go through it and learn.

In the operations team, each person has different tasks as there are only four people handling the project. They are checking social media accounts and posting every week at least three times. Some of the audience is ready and they can arrange the meeting in both Arabic and English. In the meeting, the company will decide what is required. Some of them will just take videos, and others will request them to present it, depending on each order.

On the other hand, The Cyber Hero is creating different videos or games according to age, because young students are unable to hear a video for one hour. For example, it is arranged as per the ability of ages, which is great.

Regarding education games, it is contacting people, freelancers, outside the UAE to create games by following up with them and translating them later.

The Cyber Hero Team is made up of the following

people

¡ Shamma Bin Hammad - CEO/Handling application development ¡ Hessa Al Bloushi - CSO/Handling application development ¡ Shamma Saeed - Marketing ¡ Noora Mohamed - Social media accounts

It uses social media platforms in order to advertise, as mentioned by Hessa Al Bloushi. They take every opportunity to participate in each event in order to give people an introduction about the company. It uses Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. etc.

How to Overcome Such Challenges As mentioned by Hessa Al Bloushi, once the DWC approved the project and they decided to start working on it, it was hard to take this challenge and work on it.

After practicing with DWC on how to handle, manage, communicate, present and attend many courses, the founders met many young Arab leaders. In this program, they met many people in different steps of learning, for example, sharing ideas with many companies by taking some notes from them in order to improve or learn what is required.

The second point was working on the product or service prices by understating how to put the price on each product or service as per your working hours on the videos or PowerPoints. They faced another challenge while signing a contract with other companies, which wanted to deal with them without knowing what would happen if they used The Cyber Hero’s name or products.

She mentioned that nothing is impossible, and your idea can make your future a success.

Best Business Practices It provides face-to-face courses and e-learning by proving people a true story that happened in the UAE or outside, which really gives knowledge to them.

The second important practice is they are all friends from the same college, but during work, are totally different, therefore the relationship does not affect the work. It is really important to understand each other and to respect each other’s ideas, even while presenting in front of people as mentioned by Hessa Al Bloushi. She mentioned cooperation is very important between them, for example, sharing work with team members and have them share their opinions and ideas.

One of the failed practices was that after working on some courses, the founders received a comment from advisers that they were working only on one thing for all types of people, which needed to be changed. They had to prepare different material for employees and another one for students, as to what was included for each type, as per the ages also, for example, attaching pictures for young students.

The Cyber Hero Future Plan/Company as of Today The idea was started by creating games, but the founders are looking forward to creating many topics, for example, an awareness in using water and electricity.

As they are working on many topics, we can say not only in cybersecurity, but in order to improve the project and spread awareness.

This advice was from Hessa to all the students: to use their major by creating ideas even if it was a small idea, and to accept all the challenges without being fired.

Also, try to learn and have more information about the major by working hard to achieve an idea.

The Cyber Hero was a great idea and project and I wish them all the best in the future. The most important lesson I learned from them is to believe in your ideas and do not look at your ideas as less important than others. The most successful people in the world started with a small idea and worked on it to improve and innovate it. The most amazing support was from the DWC. It was really nice to support the founders and increase the number of the entrepreneurs in the UAE, but something you should do is support yourself. It’s not necessary that people should support you. Both of the founders started this idea at the age of 22, which is a young age actually and has the meaning that even your age is not important if you believe in yourself. I hope whoever reads this case study will feel that they really want to start doing something, and believe in themselves to be an entrepreneur.

Figure 40: Here is picture from the Cyber Hero courses in both Arabic and English