Dubai: The Covid-19 pandemic has bought in new challenges to businesses as they are trying to adapt to the new threats.
Companies are accelerating to digital transformation making cybersecurity one of the key concerns. Ilijana Vavan, Chief Sales Officer at VMRay sheds light into the current market scenario of cybersecurity industry. “With hackers viewing enterprises and government organisations as the bulls eye, we witness a trend of increased attacks on these verticals. Enterprises and government bodies being the backbone of a country that plays a big role in the country’s economy. “
Vavan noted that successfully disrupting operations and services would exert a very significant social impact, especially when critical infrastructure is involved. “The effect goes beyond the attacked organization. The UAE’s advanced digitalization has created a tightly interlaced community, where one successful attack could create the dreaded domino effect. From the cyber actors’ viewpoint, this is very effective.”
These attacks are typically complex and involve advanced malware. “The preparedness to meet such advanced attacks varies from organization to organization, depending on the maturity of their cyber defence concepts. But prepare they should, and the UAE Cybersecurity Council will be there to lead the way.”
UAE being one of the leading economies in the Middle East is an attractive target for malicious actors. The numbers revealed in KPMG’s UAE Covid-19 Cybercrime Survey shows that 83 % of the surveyed companies state that they have seen significant increases in phishing scams (50%), email spamming (46%), and online scams (38%).
“The pandemic will also in 2021 provide opportunities for malicious actors and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future.” But we have no other option than to strike through it.
VMRay is aiding its customers in protecting themselves from these malicious activities. Vavan mentioned that they excel in detection and analysis. “Despite investments in security, many organizations are still struggling to fight advanced threats. These organization might already have technologies in their security stack that can detect malware, but it will mostly be detection based on signatures, heuristics, or reputation lookups. Very effective against known threats, but not against previously unknown, advanced threats.”
The advanced malware has been designed to evade traditional security defences. “Our solutions close this coverage gap. In contrast to static, signature-based analysis that can only detect previously identified malware, the dynamic, behavior-based analysis of our technology can also detect malware that is being observed for the first time.” Vavan concluded by saying that “We power the organization’s advanced threat protection capability.”
