COMMENT
G
iven the heightened cyber
threat environment we
currently live in, there is no
shortage of headlines pointing to
ongoing vulnerabilities in digital
networks and the requirement to
counter them. Only recently, results
from a survey conducted by the
British Chamber of Commerce (BCC)
showed that one in five businesses in
the UK has been the victim of a cyber
attack in the past year.
The industry association surveyed
more than 1,200 businesses across
the UK, finding that 20 per cent had
been hit by a cyber attack in the
last 12 months to early 2017. The
results found that big businesses
are far more likely than their smaller
counterparts to be victims of attacks
(42 per cent of companies with more
than 100 staff, compared to 18 per
cent of companies with fewer than
99 employees).
The results also indicated that
industry is most reliant on IT
providers (63 per cent) to resolve
issues after an attack, compared
to banks and financial institutions
(12 per cent) or police and law
enforcement (2 per cent).
statistics in and of themselves do
not aptly consider the added impact
to reputation, which can not only be
significant, but also lingering.
Significantly, the findings show that
21 per cent of businesses believe the
threat of cyber crime is preventing
their company from growing. Such
statistics resonate globally, and
even here in the Middle East there is
recurring evidence that the number
and sophistication of cyber incidents
is on the rise. Numerous reports and analysis of
cyber trends in the region reiterate
that businesses in the Middle East
are more likely to have suffered a
cyber breach, compared to the rest of
the world, with entities in the region
typically having experienced more
attacks than any other.
Statistics released by Dubai Police in
2016 demonstrate that cyber crime
in the emirate saw an increase by
136 per cent between 2013 and
2015, amounting to a reported total
of US$22.3 million in damages and
lost revenue. While in wider Middle
East, the number of compromised
records as a result of data breaches
is estimated to have risen by 50 per
cent in the first half of 2016 to more
than 10 million. Thus organisations need to develop
a level of cyber security resilience in
order to remain sustainable into the
future. Annual expenditure on cyber
security runs to hundreds of billions of
dollars on a global basis, yet statistics
point to a rising number of incidents
with a greater financial impact,
highlighting a dramatic disconnect
between what is being spent on
perceived protection and what level of
actual protection is achieved.
While important for framing the
scale and scope of the cyber threat
landscape, regional and international International Data Corporation’s
first Worldwide Semi-annual Security
Spending Guide , published at
Harshul Joshi is DarkMatter’s Senior Vice President of Cyber
Advisory Services. He can be contacted on Twitter @Harshul_J
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