Dubai: Among the top global trends for the Middle East are the spread of hacktivism to the region and the impact of ‘Western’ cyber problems on developing nations in the region whose economic prosperity and lightning fast adoption of new technologies are exposing them to threat.
Industry research shows that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region experiences ongoing threats, including widespread banking malware in the UAE and a significant amount of phishing attacks in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) was targeted in early August 2014 by regional hacktivists, Izzah Hackers and AnonArabOps.
“The Middle East region has been the target of the most sophisticated cyber-attacks and espionage campaigns. Cyber risks are becoming more worrying than traditional risks and public and private organisations are looking for an effective way to deal with any future cyber threats as they become more frequent and diverse,” said Lutfi Zakhour, a vice-president at Booz Allen Mena.
Cyber threat is evolving into one of the most “serious economic and national security challenges we face as a region, and in order to get ahead of these threats and manage them we need the right balance of technology and highly skilled analysts with intelligence tradecraft and data analytics skills,” he said.