Laying the land for a cyber-safe future

Companies worldwide are reporting more ransomware attacks, software supply chain threats and data privacy breaches.

In the midst of a global pandemic, the Health Service Executive (HSE) of Ireland experienced a cyberattack that cancelled thousands of appointments and resulted in staff keeping manual records while computers went offline. The headlining Colonial Pipeline hack in May forced the company to shut down pipeline operations and freeze IT systems. In June, JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company, was forced to pay the equivalent of $11 million in Bitcoin after a major cyber-attack halted operations in Australia, Canada and the United States.

Multimillion dollar pay-outs aside, the vulnerability of leading corporations and government organisations to cyber threats has been a jarring wake-up call for many in and outside the tech industry.

The adoption of work-from-home policies to curtail the spread of Covid-19 have hardly helped. Home connections leave remote workers increasingly exposed to phishing and ransomware. Even the upsurge of digital collaboration and productivity tools increase threat.

In the Global Intelligence Report: The State of Cybersecurity in 2021, security news platform CSO found that 50 percent of their 2,741 responders reported economic damage, a loss of productivity, and theft of private information. Cybersecurity software company Symantec found an 83 percent jump in targeted ransomware attacks among the 24 groups studied between January 2020 to 148 in June 2021.

These global experiences heed valuable warnings for us in the UAE. The widespread automation and digitalisation encouraged by the Fourth Industrial Revolution Strategy will no doubt improve our global competitiveness and enhance local industry, but also increase our reliance on the digital realm.

While the UAE has been especially fortunate in staving off cyber threats so far, our strength comes from our proactiveness as a nation.

The Dubai government launched the Cyber Security Strategy in 2017 to safeguard us from the dangers of cyberspace. Part of its framework aims to increase public awareness, support innovation and research, and establish regulations to keep us ready for any kind of future. As of 2020, we also have the dedicated UAE Cybersecurity Council, which will develop and enforce comprehensive cybersecurity measures.

So far, these initiatives have had good results – the UAE ranked fifth in the Global Cybersecurity Index 2020, jumping 33 places from 2018.

However, recent work-from-home initiatives have reinforced how important it is to continue strengthening our cyber-borders. Mohamed al-Kuwaiti, the head of UAE Government Cyber Security, revealed that the UAE has seen a 250 percent increase in cyberattacks following the pandemic. The government has dedicated the largest federal budget in the history of the Gulf state to cybersecurity – a total of AED290 billion ($79bn) over the next five years.

We are fortunate that our leadership is dedicating extensive resources to the cause, but we must appreciate that the success of the Cyber Security Strategy cannot occur in a vacuum. The tech industry must come together if we hope to deliver a threat-proof system to protect our private information, business future and national interests from harm, especially as the digital revolution rages on.

Speaking from the vantage point of Dubai Internet City, I see the immense potential our business can play in advancing these efforts. We are home to multinationals like Kaspersky, McAfee and Palo Alto Networks, who are playing a pivotal role in improving public education and delivering advanced solutions to combat the ever-evolving threat of cybersecurity. Other companies, like CyberKnight Technologies and Axon Technologies, offer a range of software and services for businesses to develop secure networks and systems.

Additionally, we seek to attract the world’s best companies to support the national cybersecurity goals, and we continue to see an increase in interest.

Even our start-up incubator, in5, enables independent thinkers, like Project Cypher, to conceive out-of-the-box solutions and build skilled teams to keep our eyes set on the future.

Seeing the landscape before us, it begs the question: how can we leverage the diversity of minds, resources and technology available in our city to develop innovative solutions for a problem that, ultimately, has no end?

For us, maintaining a collaborative platform is key. It is important to ensure clear avenues for communication between our different business partners where they can exchange the latest insights, be transparent about emerging challenges and disclose practices that will allow us to build better, more agile security systems. Such a comprehensive platform is equally valuable to the government in adapting policies to evolving business needs.

The second goal is to nurture talent. Supporting the strategy’s ambition to train 40,000 cybersecurity professionals and encourage students to pursue a career in the field, we will continue hosting events and partnering with educational institutions to enhance syllabi with real-world examples.

We’re already seeing great work being done to that effect – the University of Wollongong, located in our neighbouring Dubai Knowledge Park, launched a Bachelor of Computer Science in Cybersecurity last year to empower students with future-focused education. Even Murdoch University has expanded its campus to feature a dedicated Cybersecurity Lab.

As more devices go online for public and private use alike, it becomes equally imperative to extend the conversation outwards. Industry experts and tech organisations have a responsibility to share the consequences of unsafe online habits and fraud with the public. We must come together, experts, innovators and educators alike to provide actionable advice on reducing risks.

Most importantly, we must do each of these things again and again. We are seeing in real-time that as technology innovates, the threats associated with it evolve in tandem. The cyberattacks that have made headlines – and the many which have not – show how sophisticated malevolent players can be.

To lessen their impact, we must continually review our practices and policies. Standardising cyber-safe practices, facilitating a dialogue to innovate and fostering frameworks for education are just the start.

Ammar Al Malik, managing director of Dubai Internet City