A recent study by Kaspersky reveals that organisations in the Middle East faced 161 million malware attacks over the past year. T. Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Egypt saw a large spike in malware attacks, which increased by 67%, 64%, 45% and 32%, respectively. Qatar and the UAE had lower increases of 16% and 7%.
Turkey accounts for around a quarter of malware attacks in the region (44 million), followed by Egypt (42 million), UAE (34 million), Oman (14 million), Kuwait (11 million) and Bahrain (5 million).
Cyber criminals now target their attack strategies, to focus on advanced persistent threat (APT) type attacks to steal sensitive data form organisations. The growth in digital transformation and the increase in remote working resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, has made countries of the Middle East an attractive target. In a cloud age of any-time any-device access, from anywhere and staff who work remotely and access corporate networks from their personal devices, companies must contend with a rapidly expanding attack surface. Personal devices might not have adequate level protection and once compromised and an employee logs into the network, criminals might get access to sensitive data or encrypt data and cripple the organisation.
