ME organisations poised to embrace proactive cyber threat hunting: Survey

Middle East companies, already leading the world in the use of managed security services, or MSS, to protect networks from cyber threats, are poised for the next step in the evolution of cybersecurity: proactive threat-hunting, in which cyber defenders seek to stop threats before they do damage.

A Raytheon Company-sponsored survey, unveiled at the Kingdom Cyber Security Forum in Riyadh, revealed that companies in the Middle East are ahead of other regions in employing cyber defense measures through using external security service providers. The global survey, titled Don't Wait: The Evolution of Proactive Threat Hunting, reveals leading-edge trends in the evolution of managed security services from reactive to proactive.

Sixty per cent of companies interviewed in the region, including the UAE, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman, plan to use MSS in the next year - more than their counterparts in North America, Europe or the Asia Pacific region. Middle East organisations use managed security service providers at a higher rate than in other parts of the world, with 57 per cent of the region's organisations already using MSS providers, a much higher rate than in Europe and Asia Pacific.

 While adoption rates are high, many of the MSS services used in the region need to be supplemented with newer approaches. MSS has traditionally been reactive: anti-virus, firewalls, intrusion detection and sandbox technologies. Today, proactive hunting can effectively find sophisticated and damaging threats.

"The information and communications technology industry is experiencing a clear global shift from reactive to proactive strategies to safeguard and minimise the impact of cyber threats," said Dave Amsler, president of Raytheon Foreground Security, who delivered a keynote speech at the Kingdom Forum.

Commissioned by Raytheon and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the survey covered 19 countries across North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia, and gauged the perspectives of 1,784 CISOs and information security leaders through essential insights into current MSS offerings, barriers to adoption and future plans.

"The survey sheds light on the value of proactive threat hunting, with results clearly demonstrating a commitment to maintaining progressive information technology practices by Middle East information security leaders across organizations in the region," Amsler added. - business@khaleejtimes.com