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RIYADH: A joint team from the Center of Excellence in Information Assurance (CoEIA) at the King Saud University (KSU) and Noor IT Research Center for the Holy Qur’an at the Taibah University, Madinah, is working on a project funded by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) to secure framework for a digital Qur’an.
“The research teams from the CoEIA and the Noor IT Research Center are exploring the methods to protect the integrity of the Holy Qur’an contents available in digital formats on smart phones and web applications,” said Muhammad Khurram Khan, who is leading the project at the CoEIA. He recently returned from the United States after presenting a research paper on it and chaired a session at the 35th IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE 2017) held in Las Vegas.
ICCE is a flagship international conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (US), which is held annually since 1982 in conjunction with the prestigious Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at Las Vegas.
“As the apps are free many people download it on smart phone, iPad, laptop and desktop to read the Holy Qur’an in digital format without knowing the fact if it is authentic or not, if it assure of cyber protection,” Khan told Arab News.
He said that when we read the Holy Qur’an in the hard copy, we know that it has been printed at the King Fahd Qur’an Printing Complex or some other recognized printing house in different countries, which assure of the authenticity, while the Holy Qur’an apps have been made available in digital formats and freely distributed through Internet in the form of portable documents, websites, mobile applications, and digital handheld devices.
The digitization of religious contents brings ease to people to explore, read and study contents with their convenience on the move, but on the other hand, authenticity of the content itself might be uncertain because it is cumbersome to track and verify hundreds, even thousands of digital versions of Qur’an available online, he added.
“We have proposed a system to secure framework for digital Qur’an certification as the objective behind the project is to assure of authenticity of the digital Holy Qur’an apps,” he said.
He added that there should be an authority to monitor such apps for authentication, and issue certificate, so that readers know that this app has been certified.
The team is working to come up with novel solutions to solve research challenges. Proposed framework and techniques can overcome the authentication problems in the minds of reciters of digital versions of the Holy Qur’an, he said.
Research outcome of this project is encouraging and it has attracted commendable response from Muslims around the World, said Khan.
“We are also looking for support to spin-off a company and seeking financial support to implement this project in the real-life environment,” he said.