UAE organizations increasingly adopting a Zero Trust approach to defend against sophisticated cyber attacks

This has served to further complicate an already challenging security landscape, with organizations now under pressure to provide increased cybersecurity to allow employees the flexibility to work from where they choose.

Naim Yazbeck, General Manager, Microsoft UAE, notes that organizations across the UAE and the region are facing “a moment of reckoning” as the world witnesses a rise in increasingly sophisticated and expansive cybersecurity attacks. This reality, coupled with the move to hybrid environments, has created an urgent opportunity for all companies around the world to adopt a Zero Trust approach and assume all activity, even by trusted users, could be an attempted breach.

A higher level of protection

In a working environment that long relied on convenience, Microsoft’s Zero Trust model provides an additional layer of protection by enforcing a higher level of security through policies. The model assumes that no user, device, or network is inherently trustable. Each and every access request is evaluated, authenticated, and authorized before access is granted.

The company advises a zero-trust approach to cybersecurity across all industries, and especially in sectors that are known for handling sensitive information such as finance, healthcare, energy, and manufacturing.

Yazbeck explains that, in the past, cyber threats were largely confined to specific sectors or were considered to be more manageable reactively. However, in 2022, the average cost of a data breach reached an all-time high of $4.35 million.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report showed that the company’s Digital Crimes Unit took down around 531,000 unique phishing URLs and 5,400 phish kits between July 2021 and June 2022, leading to the identification and closure of more than 1,400 malicious email accounts used to collect stolen credentials.

In addition, Microsoft blocked 2.75 million site registrations before they could be used to engage in global cybercrime. The scale of the threat has reinforced the need for organisations to take a more aggressive stance to security.

Security remains a ‘team sport’

“Even as the digital landscape grows larger and more complex, Microsoft remains guided by our core belief that cybersecurity is about empowering people and that security is a team sport – it takes us all working together to defend the world from bad actors,” says Yazbeck.

Microsoft currently collaborates with over 15,000 partners across the security ecosystem to help identify, analyze, and tackle threats, as well as help customers that have been breached. These experts are aided by advanced machine learning techniques and artificial intelligence to help them keep up with the global threat landscape.

To further advance the establishment of a strong cybersecurity framework, Microsoft recently signed an MoU with the UAE Cyber Security Council to prevent and respond to cyber threats. Under the terms of the MoU, Microsoft and CSC UAE will also cooperate and conduct information exchanges in cybersecurity-related fields, with particular attention to national cooperation, deterrence, prevention, and responses to cyber-attacks.

“We recognize that a future with increasingly interconnected systems requires an end-to-end approach with technology and people, empowered to defend with resilience – this is why security is built into everything we design, develop, and deliver,” says Yazbeck.

“Through the power of the cloud and AI, our integrated approach enables us to think holistically about security and to address the most challenging problems confronting the world today, like passwords, decentralized identification, data regulations, and more.”