UAE major target for cyber criminals

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UAE major target for cyber criminals

Published: Mon 22 Feb 2016, 11:00 PM

Last updated: Tue 23 Feb 2016, 3:21 PM

The UAE has become a major target for cyber criminals, said Christopher J. Davis, president of Raytheon in the UAE, during the one-day UAE Security Forum held in the national capital on Sunday.
 Davis said: "Our objective is to come together with local and international partners to contribute to the creation of a cyber security infrastructure here in the UAE. As cyber warfare and cyber crime are on the rise posing a global challenge, the protection of data demands strong cyber security."
A 2015 report from Kaspersky Labs - the Kaspersky Security Bulletin Overall Statistics Report for 2015 - placed the UAE in the 19th spot globally, among countries facing the greatest risk of online infection. An earlier Kaspersky report found that the UAE was among the top five major targets for cybercriminals.
According to the report, 32.58 per cent of Kaspersky Lab product users in the UAE were targeted in 2015. The UAE was also positioned as a 'high risk' country with 52.7 per cent infections, in the category reflecting the level of local threats. Another report, the Norton Cybersecurity Insights Report, found that over two million UAE residents fell victim to cybercrime over the last year, 20 per cent of which said their personal information was stolen after using an online retailer.
Additionally, more than half of all UAE consumers reported that their account passwords had been compromised. The most common cyber threats to UAE residents are malware and phishing, both of which are often conducted via malicious e-mail attachments.

Companies need to follow best practice
Need to invest in the right security solutions
Personnel training and awareness
Threat-centric orientation that extends beyond standard policies based on past events
Pervasive internal monitoring
Sharing of security intelligence within and between organizations 
The report found that approximately 30 per cent of users reported coming into contact with online viruses and 41 per cent experienced "local threats" spread through USB sticks, shared files on local networks, CDs or DVDs.
Raytheon Company, with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specialising in defence, civil government and cybersecurity solutions, which is equipping UAE with solutions to handle challenges posed by cybercrimes.
Most common types of cyber crimes.
-IoT-enabled applications and solutions are evident across the Middle East, in various industry and government sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, oil/gas, utilities, energy and water. As they face various internal and external security issues such as network attacks, malware, malicious software, and external hackers.
-With the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend gaining momentum it is going to become increasingly difficult to introduce and manage solid security strategies. On a more local level, 65 percent of employees do not understand the security risks of using personal devices to the workplace, according to the Cisco Middle East ICT Security Study.
-Mobility is also a complex opportunity that is creating challenges for enterprises and IT departments around the world. The important thing to understand is that an increase in mobile devices increases the chances of a breach, to the point where all companies should accept the fact that it's probably going to happen. There needs to be a focus on understanding what to do when the breach occurs and how to mitigate against it before serious damage is done.
 Steps to safeguard from cybercrime
-It is important for organizations to make the right investments
-Have the right approach in place to segregate valuable network resources and enable practitioners to establish policies
-Allow only designated users to access sensitive information for specific applications, servers, and network resources. Partners play a key role in getting their customers to make the right investments in security technologies.
-Need to educate and empower the customer (defender) with real-world knowledge about the expanding attack surfaces.
Companies can put measures in place to counter attacks 
-Before - establishing control over where, when and how their networks are used and what data employees and other stakeholders can access and store.
- During - visibility and actionable intelligence is vital for security professionals to identify the threats and risky devices, and monitor their activities on the corporate network
-After - when the inevitable happens and the network is compromised by a threat, be able to retrospectively review how that threat entered the network; which systems it interacted with and what files and applications were run, to ensure it can be cleaned up as quickly as possible.
Steps taken by the government to counter
The GCC authorities have issued a cybercrime laws to address the rise in electronic crime which includes provisions and punishments for crimes such as credit card frauds, internet crimes, cyber terrorism, viruses, hacking, system interference, illegal access and interception, and so on which is a step in the right direction.
In the UAE, the National Electronic Security Authority (NESA) is the federal authority responsible for the advancement of the nation's cybersecurity. In addition to setting cybersecurity strategies and policies, NESA works on raising awareness of various stakeholders and ensuring that the wide range of UAE government bodies are aligned on the increasing threats posed by cyber crimes and the need to ensure they comply with the national policies and standards to improve the protection of national information and communications infrastructure
The authority also works on expanding cyber education and creating a collaborative culture to help protecting the UAE's IT infrastructure from cyber threats. Another key area it is working on is the development of the human capital and skills to address the growing demand for Emirati cyber-security experts to meet growing threats. (inputs provided by Cisco)
sandhya@khaleejtimes.com 
 

By Sandhya D'Mello

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