By Jamila Qadir, Contributing writer, CIO APR 20, 2022 12:49 PM PDT
While CISOs and other security leaders in government and business in the Middle East have challenges specific to the region, such as concerns about operational technology used in the oil and gas sector, regional and global knowledge sharing is increasingly seen as an important way to fight cybercrime.
With a yearly growth rate of 15 per cent, global cybercrime damages are predicted to cost up to US$10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from US$3 trillion in 2015, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.
Middle Eastern countries are not immune to cybercrime. In its State of Ransomware 2021 report, Sophos reported that that 38 per cent of the UAE tech executives polled said they were attacked with ransomware during the past year.
Countries in the region are fighting back. End-user spending on security and risk management in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is forecast to total US$2.6 billion in 2022, showing an increase of 11.2 per cent compared to last year, Gartner has forecast.
Prime targets of hacker attacks are medical and government institutions, as well as the retail sector, oil and gas companies and critical infrastructure.
The issue of countering cybercrime is on the agenda of governments worldwide, and the UAE along with the rest of the Middle East is no exception.
