Data security in education is at risk

Nada Ayoub wrote in “Al-Akhbar”:

Tawfiq Karam again. This time, it is not about keeping Karam in his position as Director of the Information Technology Unit at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in violation of the law, but rather about violations committed by the so-called “Emperor” of the Ministry and his wife in previous periods, which were leaked after his email was hacked, knowing that he is the one entrusted with the Ministry’s data, students, and everything related to “data” and its protection. As Director of Information Technology for 15 years, he is considered the “Ministry’s safe,” and in his hands is the “data” related to education, which is the largest in terms of information it contains about Lebanese students in the public and private sectors, their families, their social situations, their places of residence, and their phone numbers.

Among the revelations of the leaks (some of which were reviewed by Al-Akhbar) is that Karam’s wife, Aline Daher, was sending him emails related to her work at the Ministry of Justice, where she was responsible for a project funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). One of the emails contained documents detailing the project. At the bottom of the text, it appears that Daher had sent the same email to two people concerned at the Ministry of Justice: Judge W. H. and another person named Omar, before forwarding it to Karam for review.

Another email Karam received from his wife’s brother, Elie Daher, included the Ministry of Justice email address, Aline Daher’s username and password, and a document, which Tawfiq used to send an email on his wife’s behalf to a woman named M.S. In doing so, Karam’s wife violated the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that is usually signed by those working on projects with international agencies, which prohibits leaking any information about the projects.

The leaks also revealed that when the ministry was about to implement the “Microsoft Ifrastructure Services Support Proc. Ref.” project, it formed an examination committee that included Karam to select a technical advisor for the project. Coincidentally, Karam’s sister’s husband, Shadi Ghazal, won the tests, becoming a technical advisor for a project headed by… Tawfiq Karam himself, in a clear conflict of interest that violates all the standards of good governance and reform principles advocated by donor agencies, and which are supposed to impose adherence to them.

The conflict of interest is also evident in the transformation of the IT unit, for many years, into something resembling a “family business” by employing Elie Daher, Karam’s wife’s brother, in the same IT department that Karam heads, for about 13 years, and employing Najib Al-Hashem, one of Karam’s wife’s relatives, who is concerned with exam data. As for Abbas Abbas, one of Karam’s very close employees in the IT unit, who has specific tasks in the official exams file, his son-in-law, Mohammed Al-Souki, works as the official in charge of everything related to the IT department’s infrastructure, cameras, and surveillance operations.

The hacking of Karam’s email brought back to the fore the file of leaking and selling the official exams for the sociology and economics branch for the academic year (2011-2012), which was handed over at the time to both the Public Prosecution Office and the Central Inspection, without them being able to uncover the perpetrator. Sources indicate that “the leaks from Karam’s email led to reaching a clue that will be the basis for an investigation that is being launched to verify whether he was involved in the process of leaking the exam questions.”

This scene raises the level of concern about the security of data in the ministry, who it reaches and how it is exploited. It should be noted that the past 15 years have not passed smoothly, as Karam was investigated more than once, and there are more than one request submitted by the “Digital Transformation Network in Lebanon” to obtain information about projects and “data”, taking advantage of the Right to Access Information Law, but its inquiries remained unanswered, during the time of former Minister Tarek Majzoub and then Director General Fadi Yarak, and currently with Minister Abbas Al-Halabi.

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