Over 100 million cyber threats were detected and blocked in the UAE last year, Trend Micro found in a report released this week.
The report highlights the growing rate of cyber-attacks by malicious actors on digital infrastructures and individuals in the modern-day hybrid work environment, with 104 million threats detected and deterred.
“While the UAE’s enterprises appear to be on the recovery after successfully weathering recent crises such as the pandemic and other global events, cybercriminals have shown no signs of slowing down their sophisticated attacks,” said Majd Sinan, Country Manager, UAE for Trend Micro. “Moreover, the challenges of hybrid work, remote locations, and company-issued remote devices have led enterprises to reapproach their security strategies to protect newer vulnerabilities. The Trend Micro annual cybersecurity report provides both insights on the current threat landscape and serves as a guide for organisations to protect their digital ambitions with multi-layered security solutions for a better tomorrow.”
The report states that globally Trend Micro solutions stopped over 94.2 billion threats in 2021, a 42 percent increase in the number of detections recorded in 2020. Attacks had surged over 53 billion in the second half of 2021, blocking 41 billion threats in the first half of 2021. Ransomware attackers are shifting their focus to critical businesses and industries more likely to pay, and double extortion tactics ensure that they can profit. Ransomware-as-a-service offerings have opened the market to cybercriminals with limited technical knowledge, as well as given rise to more specialisation, such as initial access brokers who are now an essential part of the cybercrime supply chain. Threat actors are getting better at exploiting human error to compromise cloud infrastructure and remote workers. Homeworkers are often prone to take more risks than those in the office, which makes phishing a greater risk.
In the UAE, Trend Micro solutions detected and blocked over 31.6 million (31,643,722) email threats, more than 5.4 million (5,495,564) malware attacks, and nearly 36 million (35,843,132) URL victims’ attacks. Furthermore, shielding remote learning and working, Smart Home Network (SHN) solutions protected devices and networks from over 15.7 million (15,792,681) SHN inbound and outbound attacks, and prevented over 5.4 million (5,456,869) SHN events.
