The establishment and development of the tasks and activities of the National Center for Security Operations (NCSO) – which was previously known as the Command and Control Center – went through several stages. Center’s mission was previously limited to the coordination of the security authorities’ efforts with those of the Ministry of Interior (MoI).
With the center’s increasing tasks, awareness of its important role, and based on the leadership’s directives to provide all the requirements of the security work to advance it, the interior minister issued a directive to change the name of the MoI’s Command and Control Center to the (National Center for Security Operations) so as to accommodate the new emerging tasks. The minister of interior’s aspiration was to have a center with a high-level technology equipment and capable human cadres to keep pace with the advanced security work in the world, so as to serve the citizens and residents in the kingdom. The result was the launch of the Unified Security Operations Center (911) in the Riyadh, Makkah and Eastern Province regions, that will be followed by establishing similar centers in all the kingdom’s regions.
The NCSO provides the security services – including information, statistics and reports – for the security services associated with the interior ministry. In addition, NCSO coordinates the efforts among these MoI’s agencies on one side, and if needed, it plays a coordination role between the security agencies and the governmental or civil sectors in the state. Moreover, the center follows up on security emergencies to assess the situation and the need for intervene if the emergency exceeds the relevant agency’s capabilities to address it, or if the effects of that case extend to the national level.