Miscellaneous Services on Portal: IT Officials

د.العوهلي	م.الوقيت

No portals are secure 100 % from the attack by hijackers; however, the portal department does its utmost to keep safe and sound, said Dr. Yusuf Al-Awhaly and Eng. Esam Al-Waqeet, IT officials in an interview.

Resalah: Sum up the portal achievements?

Dr. Yusuf: The portal was launched last year. In spite of being new, the portal garnered a large success at the level of Saudi Arab and the Arab countries. Microsoft, for example, conducted an analytical study on the portal for being the largest academic portal. It has more than two million WebPages. It presents the King Saud University Campus on Google Earth. All colleges and faculty members have their own websites.

Resalah: But some colleges and departments have not updated websites?

Dr. Yusuf: We focus now on quality. We have been in touch with the webmasters to updates the websites in Arabic and English. Webmaster performance is assessed occasionally for quality assurance.

Resalah: What is the role of portal on university ranking?

Dr. Yusuf: The portal plays an important role in university ranking. Thru portal, the research capacity of a portal could be assessed. The KSU ranked the first now in Arab, Islamic countries in the Middle East and Africa. It has large scientific researches but were not posted on the portal. Now, more than half of the KSU portal visits come from search engines.

Interviewing eng. Esam Al-Waqeet, the director of portal department, Resalah runs the following:

Resalah: What are the new schemes on portal?

Waqeet: A number of new e-services were launched recently, first of which was blogs. Students and faculty members can have their own blogs in seconds. The second: all events running on campus are aired via a webpage; http://now.ksu.edu.sa. The third: the press file which allows browsers to follow up all press news. The fourth: SMS service.

Resalah: Have any hackers attacked the portal?

Waqeet: There is no portal secure 100% from attack. Yahoo and Google and other were threatened.  We oversee the portal continuously.