and every one of you.Finally, I’d like to invite all of you to enjoy reading these wonderfularticles written by highly talentedcommunity leaders.I am indeed thrilled to see the traction we are receiving from thegreater Washington area. Weneed your support to continuewith our mission, and remember, together we can achieve great things.It has been little over 6 months sincewe have taken charge of this greatchapter. With the help of our highly talented executive members along with all of you, we have already ac-complished so much for our technicaland non-technical communities.Just to highlight the accomplish-ments so far, we arranged a seminaron

“

Investment Opportunities inBangladesh for NRB Investors

”

.Wepublished our very first newsletter that attracted readers around theglobe. We also had couple more tech-nical seminars –on“

Nuclear Power inBangladesh

” and on “

EngineeringCancer Treatment with ExternalBeam Radiation

”.These two talks received attentionfrom the media like Voice of America(VOA). VOA interviewed me and Dr.Saifur Rahman, the speaker on Nu-clear Power.We had our most attractive event thissummer –

Science Fair for K-12 stu-dents and our annual picnic

at BlackHill Park. The entire greater Washing- ton community enjoyed the eventvery much.We have been working on twoother phenomenal initiatives –one is the

AABEA MillenniumScholarship Program for graduat-ing high school seniors

and cur-rent college students in Mathe-matics, Science, Engineering andInformation Technology disci-plines. The other one is the

AA-BEA Laptop Program,

which is agreat initiative to distribute lap- tops to unprivileged and needystudents in Bangladesh. AABEA –WDC chapter is working withanother charitable organization -Forward Hope on this effort.A couple of AABEA executives had the privilege to have a grand tourof the White House invited by asenior White House staff. AABEAexecutives also had a one on onediscussion with the Nobel Laure-ate Professor Yunus on the pros-pects of Bangladesh.Our upcoming celebration of

AABEA’s 25

Anniversary

and theFriends & Family Night are ap-proaching

October 10

Myheartiest invitation goes to each

WELCOME TO OUR SECOND NEWSLETTER

BY FAISAL QUADER, PRESIDENT AABEA-DC

NUCLEAR POWER PLANT FOR BANGLADESHBY HARES M. SYED, PRESIDENT AABEA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Over the last few years one of themost acute problems city duelersand manufacturers of Bangladeshare facing is the severe powershortage. The erratic power supplyleads to disruption to smooth pro-duction in manufacturing, agricul- tural, fish processing sectors aswell as severe disruption of watersupply. Shortage of power supplynot only impeding the economy of the nation but raising an alarm onhealth sector as well. Powershortage forcing traders to pre-serve perishables with danger-ous preservatives such as,formaldehydes, which mightcost extra billions of dollar inhealth sector and might costmillions of lives. The situationis aggravating and practicallyno planned action has been taken by the government toabate the situation.Energy supply is a major prob-lem not only for Bangladesh but throughout the Asia and otherparts of the world. But othercountries are managing theirneeds by adopting short andlong term strategies consider-ing every aspect of social andeconomical aspect of the country. The electricity infrastructureof Bangladesh is very old, notwell maintained

(contd. P14)

A A B E A W A S H I N G T O N D C

EDITORS

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 AUGUST 1, 2009

IMPRECISEKALEIDOSCOPE

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

NUCLEAR POWERPLANT FORBDESH

CYBER SECURITY

TECH AND HATE

MD & SMALLTECH BUSI-NESSES

VISION FOR MDINFO TECH

ULTIMATE TIER

GAITHERSBURG,MD: WHAT LOCALGOV CAN OFFER

Shah (Raja) AhmedFaisal QuaderAhmed AliMisu TasnimNancy Hoque

STRENGTHENINGUS-BANGLADESHRELATIONS

INSIDE THIS ISSUENUCLEAR POWERPLANT FOR BDESH

CYBER SECURITY

TECH AND HATE

MD & SMALL TECHBUSINESSES

VISION FOR MDINFO TECH

ULTIMATE TIER

GAITHERSBURG,MD: WHAT LOCALGOV CAN OFFER

LETTER TO THEEDITOR

WE CAN MAKE ADIFFERENCE

AABEA SCIENCEFAIR AND PICNIC

AABEA SEMINAR

EDITOR’S NOTES

Faisal in White House on a recentvisit arranged by Ahmed Ali andhis colleagues. We hope one day the President of the United Stateswill invite the President of AABEAto consult on wide ranging issuesbetween Bangladesh and UnitedStates that technology can offer tangible and concrete solutions.

“The currentObamaadministrationunderstandsthat cybersecurity shouldbe a top priorityfor the 21

century.”

Today’s corporations and gov-ernment agencies increasinglyrely on highly robust IT networksand connection with the globalInternet as the backbone of theircommunications, sourcing, op-erations, and financial systems.These organizations are facing emerging cyber security threatsand espionage that are a resultof increasingly sophisticatedmethods of attacks. The con-venience of global connectivitycomes with major security con-cerns, and the responsibility of maintaining a secure computing environment must be of theutmost importance for all organi-zations in the effort to protectcritical assets and resources.The Internet exposes the vulner-ability of an organizations net-work infrastructure, and pre-sents the systems to maliciousactions by cyber criminals. Far too many corporate executivesand senior government officialsdo not fully understand, or arenot adequately prepared to pro- tect their organizations against these growing dangers. Leaderssometimes fail to understand the possible risks and liability that may result from cyber attacks to their organization, and to their network infrastructure.When the risk of cyber security isnot properly addressed, the sta-bility of an organizations intellec- tual property, confidential infor-mation, business transactions,and financial systems can beexposed to major security risks.Effective network defensivemeasures are increasingly de-pendent upon its growing, andexpanding network-centric com-puting environment. Critical national infrastructures supporting vital areas such as transporta- tion, power, finance, and com-munications are growing moredependent upon Internet-basedapplications. A cyber threat,could quickly shutdown any oneof these critical infrastructuresand potentially cripple severalsectors at same time. Corporateexecutives, agency heads, andgovernment leaders must payadequate attention and provideenough resources to their Chief Information Officer (CIO), seniordecision makers, and networksecurity engineers to effectivelydevelop a strategy in countering cyber attacks.

In today’s digital age, computernetwork attacks are often a re-sult of criminal hackers attempt-ing to penetrate and break intoan organizations system, foreither financial gain, or for politi-cal purposes. Back in 2004,viruses and malicious softwarecosts businesses worldwidebetween US$169 billion andUS$240 billion, and the trendand rate of attacks continue toincrease yearly. A country’snational security could be se-verely threatened if these cyberhackers were to successfullygain access to sensitive com-puter systems. There are con-stant cyber attacks on networks throughout the world that do notalways make it on the frontpages on our media and some- times go unnoticed. For exam-ple, in April 2007, nearly 1 mil-lion computers worldwide werereportedly used to conduct de-nial-of-service attacks (DOS) on the Estonian government andcorporate websites, and over a 3week period, these cyber attacksswamped Estonia’s

computernetwork with so much traffic that the Estonian government wasforced to shut down their net-work.

More recently on July 4

of this year, a series of organ-ized denial-of-service attackswere launched against variousU.S. government websites, toinclude the White House, Fed-eral Trade Commission, Depart-ment of Defense, National Secu-rity Agency, U.S. State Depart-ment, U.S. Secret Service, Treas-ury Department, the New YorkStock Exchange, as well as sev-eral websites within the SouthKorean government. There iswide speculation that NorthKorea is behind these attacks,and some within the intelligencecommunity feel that North Koreamay be running a “cyber warfareunit” which has been taskedwith hacking into governmentand military websites. Manycomputer hackers from Chinahave also penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S.government agencies and vari-ous U.S. companies, and havebeen successful at stealing pro-prietary information, and in sev-eral instances, have gained un-authorized access to electricalpower plants, dams, and othercritical infrastructures in theUnited States. For many foreignintelligence agencies, cyber war-fare is now the new frontier of counterintelligence, and if theseforeign agencies are successful

(continued on page 18)

CYBER SECURITY THREATS ON A GLOBAL SCALE

BY AHMED R. ALI, CYBER SECURITY EXPERT

Page 2

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 AUGUST 1, 2009

Ahmed R. Ali, is an IT Security Professional and U.S Military Veteran, and is currently thePresident of TISTA Science andTechnology Corporation(www.tistatech.com), a company that is providing Information Assurance, Cyber Security, andEngineering expertise and solutions to various governmentagencies. TISTA has recently beenawarded the Top 500 Veteran-Owned Businesses & the Top 500Emerging Businesses in theUnited States of America, by DiversityBusiness.com.

While many of us can agree that technology has greatlyimproved our lives, we havealso seen the negative impacts that new means of massivecommunication bring. Onlinehate is as much a part of theinternet as is e-commerce.Every hate group in Americahas a website and many hate-mongers have their own per-sonal blogs. After the recent tragic shooting at the Holo-caust Museum in WashingtonD.C., much was learned aboutJames Von Brunn through hiswritings on his blog. One of thegrowing trends in our middleand high schools is the conceptof cyber bullying, using email,internet, and social websitessuch as Facebook to bully,intimidate, and slander otherchildren as well as teachersand school staff. The Mont-gomery County Hate CrimesCoordinator, David Baker,monitors many of these web-sites and blogs for hate activity.While most of the activity is notpunishable by law, there are times where the rhetoriccrosses the line and commu-nity groups need to get in-volved.An increasing number of thesecyber bullying or hate groupsalso target religious and ethnicminorities, which can result in threats or violence againstmany of these groups. A recentspeech at an opening seminarat the United Nations head-quarters, addressing the areaof hate in the internet age, theUN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said “I call it digital de-monization’ – and we haveseen it time and again target-ing innocents because of theirfaith, their race, their ethnicityand their sexual orientation.”Cyber-bullying is not only alocal problem, it has also beenidentified as a world-wide prob-lem. The psychological andemotional outcomes of cyber-bullying are similar to real lifebullying outcomes, and theseacts have significantly in-creased in recent years.Fortunately, there are a num-ber of positive forces that arealso using technology to pre-vent the spread of hate. MorrisDees, from the Southern Pov-erty Law Center, has spent aconsiderable amount of timeand money to purchase everyhate-based domain name on the internet with the hope of making it harder for people tofind hate groups. In addition, the Southern Poverty Law Cen- ter, through its Teaching Toler-ance programs, has a programon cyber bullying for middleand high school students withguides for teachers to leaddiscussions in their class-rooms. On a more local level, the Montgomery County Com-mittee on Hate/Violence hasworked with a number of groups including the Montgom-ery County Public SchoolsStudy Circle Program, whichbrings together parents, teach-ers and students to talk about the effects of racism on stu-dent achievement, and ConflictResolution Center of Montgom-ery County (CRCMC) to createprograms that make studentsand community members moreaware of hateful speech andprovide positive tools to com-bat hate. This includes working on tools to help students recog-nize cyber bullying and provid-ing resources and processesfor students to report it imme-diately.The Montgomery County Com-mittee on Hate/Violence(COHV) works for equality, un-derstanding and respect for allpeople through communityeducation, collaboration andlegislation. The COHV re-sponds to acts of hate/violenceagainst individuals, groups orinstitutions. The COHV advises the Montgomery County Coun-cil, Executive and agenciesabout hate/violence and rec-ommends policies and pro-grams necessary to reduceincidents of hate/violence. As the Chair of the Committee,one of my areas of focus

isreaching out to the residents of the county and gathering infor-mation on activities that areoccurring and pointing Countyresidents to resources that areavailable to them. Ahmed Ali,who is also a member of thecommittee, is focused on out-reach efforts to each of thecommunities in MontgomeryCounty.

(continued on page 4)

TECHNOLOGY AND HATE: AN UNFORTUNATE PARTNERSHIP

BY AMINA MAKHDOOM , CHAIR, MONTGOMERY COUNTY COMMITTEE ON HATE/VIOLENCE(COHV)

“The COHV advisesthe MontgomeryCounty Council,Executive andagencies about hate/violence andrecommends policiesand programsnecessary to reduceincidents of hate/violence.”

Page 3

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 AUGUST 1, 2009

Ms. Amina Makhdoom, Chair,Montgomery County Committee onHate/Violence (COHV)For more information on COHV, contactthe Office of Human Rights (240) 777-8450 or visit the website:

http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/hmrtmpl.asp?url=/content/humanrights/OnHate.asp