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Perspectives
Are you safe?
ME PoV Summer 2015 issue
Your business growth strategies are at the heart of the cyber risks your organization faces.
Most reports on cyber security revolve around a common theme: despite heightened attention the number of cyber incidents–and their associated costs–continues to rise. They typically point to the growing sophistication of hackers and other adversaries as a particularly intractable problem, and some deliberate over whether being secure is even possible in today’s rapidly evolving landscape of cyber-attacks.
The Middle East in particular is on high-alert with three dimensions of threat elevating the level of risk above global averages:
Regional geo-political instability
The growing political instability in various conflict zones throughout the Middle East has given rise to numerous hacktivist groups that have wreaked havoc on public and private institutions, both regionally and globally. These notorious, self-professed electronic armies use malicious and destructive techniques to undermine the security of the Internet as a means to promote political ends.
Perceived economic wealth
The Middle East, more specifically member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), is perceived as a region of economic wealth. To cyber criminals who are trying to exploit governments, public and private institutions for financial gains, this makes the Middle East a central target for attack and indeed has been.
Above average malware infection rates
Since 2012, every country in the Middle East has had, almost without exception, at least double (and in some cases ten times) the number of infected systems than the global average as per Microsoft’s quarterly report on the average malware infection rate per country
Are you safe?
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