Dubai: Information security risks are becoming a major concern for organisations globally due to an increase in the number of advanced persistent threats, industry experts said at the Middle East Enterprise Security Summit 2012 on Wednesday.
“Consumerisation of smartphones and bring your own device [BYOD] are the biggest trends driving the network security market in the region,” Abdy Baul Lewis, director of ICT practice at Frost & Sullivan, said.
Frost & Sullivan anticipates that technology convergence, regulatory compliance and continuous growth of network infrastructure will continue to drive up sales of security suppliers in the region in the next six years.
He said that building security for electronic assets is one of the most critical tasks facing organisations today. In a converged world, where the threats of each system are multiplied; getting advice, sharing best practice and talking to partners is a vital part of the construction process.
The summit included in-depth discussions and case studies on enterprise security management attended by top security managers.
Critical concern
According to Kamran Ahsan, head of information security at Injazat Data Systems, Information security is increasingly emerging as a critical concern in today’s modern business environment.
“This trend is very much evident in the region where enterprises have experienced threats such as infiltration, data leakage and other cyber warfare,” Ahsan said.
He said data is in the focus as worldwide IP traffic will quadruple by 2015 as two billion people on the internet at the same time with 10 billion internet-connected devices.
Quoting a Kasperky Lab report, Ahsan said that out of the 107 trillion emails sent in 2011, 89 per cent were spams. About 1.34 billion threats are detected in the third quarter alone.
“Trends such as mobility, cloud computing and BYOD are fast gaining momentum in the UAE at the same time they are bringing new challenges to IT security,” Bashar Bashaireh, regional director, Fortinet Middle East, said.
He said organisations in the UAE should act now to regain control of their IT infrastructure by strongly securing their network and applying granular control over users, devices and applications.
