Havelsan Business Eco-System Summit - Cyber Security Cooperation
The 2nd Havelsan Business Eco-System Summit was realized under the auspices of Havelsan with the ‘Cyber Security’ theme on 20 September 2016 at the Bilkent Hotel in Ankara. Havelsan General Manager and CEO Mr.Ahmet Atalay, Bilkent University President Prof.Abdullah Atalar, ODTÜ President Prof. Mustafa Verşan Kök and many invitees attended the Summit.
Delivering the opening speech of the ceremony, Havelsan General Manager and CEO Mr. Ahmet Hamdi Atalay stated that Havelsan was a technology company conducting business in 4 main areas and added that through this summit they aimed to gather the companies active in this area, unite their capabilities and create synergy in order to develop indigenous and national solutions required by Turkey to put them rapidly to the market. Noting that they, as Havelsan, developed and manufactured command control and combat management systems and provided services, and Mr. Atalay emphasized that their company was amongst the top ten simulator developers in the world. Underlining that Havelsan manufactured a wide variety of simulators ranging from F-16 fighter jets to the “Atak” Helicopter and the “Altay” Main Battle Tank and said that for the first time they would be launching a product this year concerning the civil simulator area. Mr. Atalay also mentioned that they would be conducting the delivery of the commercial Boeing aircrafts on 29 October in order to fulfill the demands of the Turkish Airlines and that they planned to continue the same business with the commercial Airbus aircrafts in the following stages.
Mr. Atalay noted that as Havelsan they also developed the software based management information systems such as UYAP, SEÇSİS, TAKBİS - through which government’s critical operations are executed – and launched them to service and added that for the last two years they have been providing services in the area of cyber security as the fourth area of activity which is an important component of mainland security. Mr. Atalay said, “Cyber security became one of the crucial components of national security in the last decade. We analyze that cyber forces are being considered as main features in addition to the land, naval and air forces in the world.”
Mr. Atalay emphasized that Turkey is amongst the first ten countries either initiating the attacks or getting attacked in the annually published reports and continued, “Turkey is not conducting the attack but the attacks are realized through the seized devices, slaved computers and our infrastructures. Surely Turkey seems to appear as the source of the attacks since the IP addresses in Turkey are used. At this point we need to realize that being perceived as the conductor of the attack at the same time means that we are being a target of the attack.”
Havelsan to Launch National Cyber Security Products to the Market in the Short Term
Havelsan General Manager and CEO Mr. Ahmet Hamdi Atalay stated that there is an important gap in Turkey regarding the cyber security area and they were making important investments in order to fill this gap in the recent period and continued, “This year, we inaugurated our cyber security center of excellence to this end. We regard and position Havelsan as Turkey’s center of excellence for cyber security. Through this center, we initially started to provide cyber security services with the manageable services approach to the demanding institutions and enterprises. We are offering this service to various public institutions as well. Moreover, this center is a Research and Development laboratory and we began developing the cyber security solutions required by the critical infrastructures in Turkey at this laboratory in an indigenous and national manner. We can never be completely safe if we do not develop our own national solutions in cyber security. We are working on 11 projects within the framework of the cooperation with the companies in the business eco-system, TÜBİTAK and other companies. Soon we will start to launch our national products to the market as well”.
Bringing attention to the fact that there is approximately a 15,000 cyber security expert shortage in Turkey, Mr. Atalay expressed that the center of excellence also acted as a training center and that they attached priority to train blue collar experts and therefore they needed to make use of all skilled experts around the country in this area.
Elaborating that they were in cooperation with the universities for building Turkey’s cyber security force, Mr. Atalay added that they opened the BİLHA (Bilkent – Havelsan) laboratory with Bilkent University to this end and that they worked on expanding this cooperation to other universities in Turkey. Mr. Atalay expressed that they have contacted all universities in Turkey in April 2016 and invited the experts actively working in the area of cyber security to Ankara and continued, “We held various meetings with approximately 110 scientists for two days and sized up the projects they worked in as well as the areas in which we may cooperate; today we gather with the industry and the cyber security companies. Our expectation from this meeting is to gather all studies conducted in this area until now and enhance and develop the know-how and add speed, quality and force to our indigenous solutions. Cooperating with all people who may contribute to the provision of Turkey’s cyber security and elevating Turkey’s strength in this area is our mission”.
Havelsan – Bilkent - METU Cooperation Agreement Signed
Following the opening remarks, the Business Eco-System Protocol for an institutional and continuous collaboration was signed between Havelsan, METU and Bilkent Universities. On behalf of Bilkent University President Prof. Abdullah Atalar, President of METU Prof. Mustafa Verşan Kök and on behalf of Havelsan General Manager and CEO Mr. Ahmet Hamdi Atalay signed the protocol. President of Bilkent University Prof. Abdullah Atalar stated that cyber security has gained more and more importance in daily life and more people are focusing on this area now and added, “Turkey can become one of the leading countries in this area of software but due to the state regulations it is quite hard to establish major software companies. We all have to exert efforts to alter this regulation. We should keep the Turkish software company bought by Google as a good example in our minds. With the increase of such cases, I believe that the time is near that we enter into the list of top ten countries in the world in the area of software, it is not quite so far away.”
METU President Prof. Mustafa Verşan Kök stated that he believed they will be achieving great success through this protocol and with the inclusion of the companies in ODTÜ Teknokent and he thanked the representatives of Havelsan and the President of Bilkent University for their cooperation.
During the course of the event, bilateral negotiations on business and cooperation opportunities within the scope of the Havelsan cyber security business eco-system were conducted with the invited companies which are active in the sector in the area of cyber security and a capability matrix and company inventory were created to this end.
