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Cybersecurity risks have increased over the past year as employees worked from home as part of the safety measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The UAE experienced more than 15.8 million brute force attacks (where trial-and-error is used to guess login info) on Remote Desktop Protocols (RDP) in 2020, according to a report by global cybersecurity company Kaspersky.
The total number of brute attacks on RDP, which is used to access Windows or servers remotely, increased by 193 percent, from 467,115 in February to 1.3 million in March last year, when the UAE’s lockdown measures were announced, as per Kaspersky’s telemetry.
And it added that, with people continuing to work from home, attacks are on an upward trajectory and reached five million in January and February combined.
However, despite the increase in cybersecurity attacks, 88 percent of employees in the UAE never want to return to pre-pandemic, traditional work paradigms, the recent survey by Kaspersky revealed.
“Remote work is here to stay. Even as organisations begin considering re-opening their workplaces, many will continue to include remote work as part of their operating model or even combine working from home and the office in a hybrid format,” said Emad Haffar, head of technical experts at Kaspersky.
Emad Haffar, head of technical experts at Kaspersky.
“That means it’s likely these types of attacks against remote desktop protocols will continue to occur at a rather high rate. 2020 made it clear that organisations need to enhance their security measures, and a good place to start is providing stronger protection for their RDP access,” he continued.
The survey also indicated that 71 percent of employees in the UAE see the significance of retaining or upskilling their capabilities to perform better in their existing jobs or possibly look at a career change, while 53 percent believe that technology skills are the most important to develop.
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