GCC most prone to cyber attack

The ever-increasing connectivity of the Middle Eastern countries a higher risk of cyber attacks on an ever-wider range of targets, according to security experts.

Most analysts, speaking at last week's Gitex Technology Week in Dubai, were in agreement in saying that the concept of a high-tech "smart" nation poses a security risk that must be addressed because increased digitisation also means more opportunities for cyber criminals to gain access.

A recent threat report from F5 Networks, found that more than half the  companies surveyed for a study had faced distributed denial of service attacks" that took down their networks, often for several days.

Of these, 31 per cent said that the cost of recovery is between $20 and $30 million, with another 34 per cent estimating their recovery costs at $10 to $20 million.

Similarly, another security company, FireEye, found that the region - and the countries of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) in particular - ranks high on the list of targets.

What we've seen is significant growth in the number and frequency of attacks in this region, said Darren Gale, FireEye's network and forensic tools lead for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

In terms of the density of commercial and government organisations, relatively speaking (the UAE) is definitely under attack, from a broad spectrum of entities.

The threats, range from highly sophisticated cyber criminal groups to "hacktivists" and state-sponsored groups.

Some security specialists noted that healthcare systems might be subject to cyber attacks, as they become more reliant on Internet-based technologies.

Additionally, as oil and gas companies increasingly turn towards automated, remotely controlled systems, many analysts fear that they may be compromised, disrupted - or even crippled - by a cyber attack. Such concerns were highlighted regionally in 2012, when a virus hit 30,000 computers belonging to the world's largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, which replaced important files with images of burning American flags and deleted vast amounts of data.

It took two weeks for technicians to fully repair the system and caused damages of about $15 million. 

Reported by:Khaleej times