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MIDEAST, TURKEY CYBER THREATS SPIKE, PROMPTING DEFENSE CHANGESMIDEAST, TURKEY
CYBER THREATS SPIKE, PROMPTING DEFENSE CHANGES

The vast majority of organizations in the region saw more attacks in the past
year, but most don't feel prepared for future incidents.

Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer

October 8, 2024

4 Min Read
Source: Viacheslav Lopatin via Shutterstock


Organizations in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey suffered
more than 10 attacks in the past year on average — and the vast majority of
business and IT professionals expect the coming year to be worse — driving
efforts by cybersecurity experts in those countries to simplify and modernize
their cyber defenses and IT infrastructure.

Overall, less than half of organizations (46%) feel well-prepared to defend
against future cyberattacks, according to a survey of nearly 1,000 security
professionals in those three regions published by Internet-services provider
Cloudflare. With geopolitical conflict on the rise and cybercriminals
increasingly focused on the Middle East region and Turkey, Bashar Bashaireh,
regional vice president at Cloudflare, said in a statement.

"Organizations across the Middle East and Türkiye are managing an increasingly
complex cybersecurity landscape," he said. "With incidents on the rise in both
volume and frequency, this balancing act becomes even more challenging, leaving
leaders with a sense of diminishing control over their organizations’
technological and security frameworks."

Cyberattacks have become commonplace in the region, but each nation's threat
profile is slightly different. While the vast majority of companies in the UAE,
for example, have suffered cyberattacks in the past two years, approximately a
quarter of those incidents were caused by insiders. Both Saudi Arabia and the
UAE have seen an increase in attacks over the past year, with DDoS attacks alone
leveled by hacktivists jumping 70%. And in another wrinkle, a group of
cybercriminals recently targeted Turkish users with Android malware aimed at
stealing accounts.

The three countries have all embarked on major investments in modernization,
pursuing major initiatives such as Abu Dhabi's Economic Vision 2030 and Saudi
Arabia's Vision 2030, but the countries also need to strengthen their
cybersecurity efforts to protect their investments, Chris Murphy, managing
director at FTI Consulting, wrote in a November 2023 analysis of Middle East
firms' cybersecurity readiness.

"Threat actors will not pause their activities while these strategic plans
unfold, and without the necessary security and preparedness measures in place,
cyber risks will threaten the vitality of key sectors and the overall economic
growth of the region," he wrote.


SIMPLIFYING & MODERNIZING CYBER DEFENSE



The majority of organizations in the Middle East and Turkey plan to increase
cybersecurity's share of their IT budgets. The top priority for businesses
across the region is to consolidate and simplify their cybersecurity
infrastructure, with half of all organizations ranking the effort as a top-three
initiative, followed by almost half (47%) prioritizing the modernization of
their applications, according to Cloudflare's report.

"Despite their plans, many feel they are still not ready for what lies ahead,
and there is a 'confidence gap' in key areas for a large number of respondents,"
Cloudflare stated.





Source: Cloudflare

Those include the security of applications and data in the public cloud, a lack
of oversight into their supply chain, and a lack of visibility and control over
the devices that access their networks, according to Cloudflare's report.

The good news is that some nations have made strong progress in securing their
systems, to the point that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is ranked second, after
the United States, in the International Telecommunication Union's Global
Cybersecurity Index.


MOST PESSIMISTIC INDUSTRIES: MEDIA, TELECOM & GAMING

According to Cloudflare, cyberattackers in the past year targeted financial
services, IT firms, and companies providing business and professional services
most often, and were more likely to target larger organizations. Yet the sectors
most worried about future cyberattacks are the media and telecom sector followed
by the gaming sector, with 97% and 92% of respondents, respectively, predicting
a cybersecurity incident in the next 12 months.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the telecom and media sectors are among the least
staffed as well, with 39% of information-security roles remaining unfilled,
according to a recent report by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

"The growth rate of the domestic IT market in some developing regions is
changing so rapidly, the labor market cannot manage to educate and train the
appropriate specialists with the necessary skills and expertise in such tight
deadlines," Vladimir Dashchenko, a security evangelist with Kaspersky's ICS
CERT, wrote in a statement.

Companies in each region have struggled to meet government-backed cybersecurity
frameworks, with 62% of companies in Turkey meeting the requirements of the EU
cybersecurity framework, 69% of Saudi firms meeting the Saudi Arabian Monetary
Authority (SAMA) framework, and 62% UAE organizations falling short in complying
with the National Electronic Security Authority (NESA) framework.

Despite that, executives' commitment to cybersecurity remains lukewarm,
Cloudflare stated in the report

"Interestingly, despite the increasing volume of attacks, many cite a lack of
buy-in from leadership as a key challenge," the firm stated. "Perhaps this is a
case of cybersecurity fatigue, but whatever the cause, senior leaders cannot
afford to ignore the challenges facing their organizations."

Read more about:

DR Global Middle East & Africa



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer



Veteran technology journalist of more than 20 years. Former research engineer.
Written for more than two dozen publications, including CNET News.com, Dark
Reading, MIT's Technology Review, Popular Science, and Wired News. Five awards
for journalism, including Best Deadline Journalism (Online) in 2003 for coverage
of the Blaster worm. Crunches numbers on various trends using Python and R.
Recent reports include analyses of the shortage in cybersecurity workers and
annual vulnerability trends.

See more from Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer
Keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats, newly discovered vulnerabilities,
data breach information, and emerging trends. Delivered daily or weekly right to
your email inbox.

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