cyber trends
In the Middle
East, the volatile
political situation
and rapid adoption
of technology puts
the region at risk
when it comes to
cyberattacks.
like a closed enterprise, they are an easy
target for cybercriminals.
The attackers are more evolved, well-
organised and using highly targeted
techniques that leave technology-only
security strategies exposed. To identify
and stop attackers, organisations need to
understand how they think, how they work
and what they want. Adopting strategic
security intelligence solutions will allow
organisations to move from reactive
measures to proactive threat hunting.
how cybersecurity must be an integral
part of a company’s strategy and how
firms need to understand and protect
against human behaviour (clicking on
a link) which may unwittingly open an
organisation up to risks.
Jawad Toukna, Director Regional Sales
Emerging Markets, Forcepoint
Jawad Toukna, Director
Regional Sales Emerging
Markets, Forcepoint Kuwait and Bahrain with 1.9 million and
1.2 million respectively.
There is no doubt that the Middle East
has made strides in technology adoption,
but the region is still vulnerable to
cyberattacks. According to Trend Micro,
there were 1.7 billion ransomware attacks
detected globally in 2018. Out of these,
2.4 million were in the UAE, followed by Ransomware is a great example of how
cybersecurity affects us all here in the
Middle East, from the boardroom right
down to employee level. Ransomware is
not a new threat, but understanding how
companies can fall victim to this and
other ‘traditional’ threats demonstrates
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Issue 18
Recently, Forcepoint conducted a
survey across the Middle East and
found that while 69% of IT leaders within
organisations have high levels of trust in
their employees, 50% also acknowledge
that human behaviour is most damaging
to trust.
Forcepoint believes that by taking a
‘human-centric’ approach to cyberthreats,
organisations can prevent breaches.
Part of this approach means adopting
behavioural analytics technologies,
something that our survey showed is
not happening in more than 50% of
organisations in the Middle East (despite
90% of them saying this is a crucial step
to effectively stop breaches).
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