Over the last 12 months, organisations across the Middle East have been adapting to business disruption and embracing new working environments. Since the start of the pandemic, working from home has become much more widespread across the Middle East and the rest of the world. While this approach is convenient and has many benefits, it also exposes businesses to a range of new and emerging cybersecurity risks.
Organisations in the Middle East are facing accelerating threats from vulnerabilities exposed from the rapid shift to remote working set-ups. According to a report from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), the UAE saw cyberattacks increase from 21,000 in January 2020 to 103,408 in June and 123,000 in December. In 2020 there was a 485% increase in cyberattacks in the country, which corresponds with remote working during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The report also outlined that the top threat at the end of 2020 was malware attacks, which contributed to 62% of all cybersecurity attacks in December. There were also significant security risks caused by exploit and phishing attacks.
As more businesses move from a temporary solution towards a more holistic ‘work from anywhere’ approach, there needs to be tighter security controls to build resilience against external and internal cyber threats. Organisations in the Middle East need to increase awareness of emerging cybersecurity trends in order to safely maintain a flexible working environment and prevent attacks before they begin.
Staying safe in a ‘work from anywhere’ world
For businesses in the Middle East, adapting to a ‘work from anywhere’ approach requires a secure foundation of threat protection to keep up with cybersecurity trends that have emerged from business disruption.
When it comes to protecting your organisation, the speed that you can detect and respond to a threat is crucial. Implementing automation tools can optimise an organisation’s time to qualify (TTQ) and mean time to respond (MTTR) to a security threat. A Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution with Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities can be deployed in order to remove human error from operations and maximise efficiency. This means security teams can spend less time gathering information and more time focusing on remediating the threat.
Prioritising cybersecurity best practice will allow Middle Eastern organisations to achieve the best outcomes for their employees, customers and operations. It is essential that business leaders update their employees on security protocols as threat actors seek to take advantage of workers who have been remote since the start of the pandemic and are therefore more likely to let down their guard. Educating users about policies and guidelines will ensure that teams stay aligned with current operational norms and expectations. Organisations have to be prepared for a future of uncertainty and take action to ensure business continuity.
Security Operations Center (SOC) teams should review their cybersecurity efforts to match the requirements of a new hybrid working environment. The majority of breaches today are identity-related meaning strong access control is a must to protect businesses and their customers within remote environments. Adopting a flexible multi-factor authentication (MFA) can safeguard user credentials and minimise opportunities for hackers to gain unauthorised access through phishing attacks. MFA can also ease some of the pressure on remote SOC teams as they work to secure their organisations’ infrastructure and address the demands of a distributed workforce.
On top of this, visibility and protection of the endpoint has become paramount in the remote workforce model. Greater visibility across endpoints, networks, and the cloud will allow SOC teams to serve both remote and office-based operations. SIEM helps remote workforce visibility use cases by providing businesses with immediate visibility into their remote environments. By putting visibility and monitoring at the center of their cybersecurity strategy, organisations can help SOC teams maintain compliance, protect patient and consumer data, and improve their organisation’s security posture.
Harnessing high-value insights can assist security and IT operations teams in delivering an effective and secure remote working capability. Dashboards can help SOC teams gain vision into the remote habits of a workforce. They can also provide useful pointers for where additional alerts will give the most value. Every organisation should be able to search rich forensic data to understand when and how an incident occurred, and at the same time, contain the compromise with an endpoint lockdown.
Building a ‘security first’ future
Organisations across the Middle East can achieve greater network protection by implementing security solutions empowered with network threat protection, multi-factor authentication, and automated security awareness services.
As digital trends across the region continue to accelerate, it is expected that more businesses will embrace a flexible work environment. Organisations in the Middle East do not need to reinvent their approach to cybersecurity. They can simply streamline existing cybersecurity solutions to future proof their operations and help them meet local compliance requirements.
Digital transformation will only deliver Return on Investment (ROI) if organisations can navigate risk and reduce vulnerabilities. SOC teams should be applying the lessons learned in 2020 and beyond to guide the future of their organisation’s dynamic.
