The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, OIC, says it is on the path of making real progress towards establishing a Cybersecurity Centre, which is due to be up and running soon.

The OIC’s head of Information Technology Department, Wajdi Alqulaiti, made the announcement while delivering a statement on behalf of the OIC Secretary-General at the OIC-CERT Annual Conference 2017, under the theme 'Uncovering Future Threats', held at Baku, Azerbaijan, and ends on 9th November.

The Secretary-General said that the centre’s driving objective lies in promoting and developing cooperation among OIC Member States to prevent, combat, and eliminate cyberterrorism, in accordance with the principles of the OIC Charter, the OIC Convention on Combating International Terrorism, and with full respect to the sovereignty of Member States, the rule of law, international law, including human rights law.

"We are all aware, as well as concerned, about the emergence of ever-evolving new patterns and trend in international terrorism and violent extremism particularly cyber terrorism and criminality on and via cyberspace," underlined the statement.

By attending the event, the OIC General Secretariat reiterated its call for the Member States, which have not yet joined the OIC-CERT, to join the institution in order to enable the important mechanism to play a more tangible and effective role in addressing cyber security issues.