Security Analytics And Cybercrime In The Middle East – What Can We Do To Enhance Digital Security In MENA Countries?

Businesses in the Middle East are more likely to have suffered from cybercrime than their global counterparts. This eye-opening statistic from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is enough to make any CEO or IT Director stop in their tracks and take a closer look at their current cybersecurity structure (or lack thereof).

The truth is that cybercrime is evolving faster than businesses are able to react, which leaves them vulnerable to attacks. One of the biggest issues is that organizations view cybersecurity as solely an IT responsibility and do not make the appropriate decisions quick enough. If organizations are serious about protecting themselves and their customers, it is imperative that a shift take place – cybersecurity must be regularly discussed by the board and become part of every MENA company’s operating policy. Because it’s not just about being prepared; it’s about expecting a cyber-attack regardless the size of your company.

The key to the solution lies in the motivation.

Companies in the Middle East and Africa often find it difficult to identify when an attack has taken place, and many only discover it when third parties or clients report suspicious messages or requests for funds. In fact, most victims of cybercrime are everyday consumers who confidently use multiple devices at home and on-the-go.

Despite awareness of the increased risk of cybercrime, many consumers do not regularly engage in vigilant online behavior. And cybercriminals know this and take advantage of it. Therefore the solution to combating cybercrime lies not in consumer education but rather in improving enterprise security measures for online data and activity.

Hospitals are frequent victims of cybercrime and ransomware, and you may be wondering why a hacker would want to find out strangers’ sugar and cholesterol levels. But cybercriminals are opportunistic and strategic. By accessing personally identifiable information, cybercriminals can be planning to perpetrate large-scale fraud, thus victimizing both private citizens and countless businesses in the healthcare system.

Cybercriminals operate for many reasons, including financial gain, entertainment, and ego, but understanding why they have stolen a particular dataset will ultimately help combat cybercrime in the region.

Cybersecurity is an end-to-end challenge and therefore requires an end-to-end solution. Before security teams can stop cyber-attacks, they must first be able to see them. Traditional Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools can’t keep up with the volumes of information or provide the analytics needed for full situational awareness.

RSA Security Analytics provides the total visibility needed to detect and investigate advanced threats and cut attacker free time. The industry-leading security system provides dozens of compliance reports covering a multitude of regulatory regimes and industry requirements, as well as reports on zero-day malware, botnets, policy-evasion tactics, intentional data exfiltration, anomalous communications, and compliance gaps. RSA Security Analytics is engineered to make it easier and quicker for organizations to differentiate normal behavior patterns from potential cyber-attacks, thus enabling rapid investigation in real time.

In today’s fast-paced, digital-centric world, we know that simply investing in security technology and protection is not enough to combat cybercriminals, and can instead create a false sense of security. If organizations are serious about cybersecurity in the MENA region, they must not only deploy the right technology, but they must also employ the right people and policies to track down the origin of a cybersecurity threat.

Read more about RSA’s virtually limitless Security Analytics Reporting capabilities here.

About the Author: Dell Technologies