Z Services, a cloud-based cybersecurity solutions provider to Middle East and North Africa (MENA) enterprises, will roll out consumer tailored solutions by 2019 to tap demand for cybercrime countermeasures.
“Cybercrime in general - organised or not organised – generates around $1 trillion revenues every year and it is growing at 20 per cent annually," Nidal Taha, president of the UAE-headquartered Z Services, told The National. "It is a number one crime in the value of dirty money even before drugs. Not only enterprises but cyber criminals are also targeting gullible individuals.”
Z Services caters to some of the big enterprises in the region such as Etisalat, Saudi Telecom Company and Maroc Telecom but is looking to offer individual consumer solutions in mid-2019.
The MENA region’s share in the money generated through cybercrimes is around 20 per cent, said Mr Taha, adding, “cyber criminals are hacking individuals’ email accounts and blackmailing them leading to huge loss of personal wealth.”
Z Services, in association with California-based McAfee - the device-to-cloud cybersecurity company - launched the first in-country cloud security solution to organisations across the MENA last week.
“We are the first in-country [provider], because the cloud is developed in the UAE where we will be hosting traffic. It’s not like other players who host the traffic on clouds abroad or that are developed outside. It will give us an advantage of being faster while responding or detecting any malware,” said Mr Taha.
With the addition of this solution, Z Services will extend its cloud-based customer offering, and enhance its data protection and threat prevention capabilities across different platforms. The in-country solution also enables customers to remain compliant with regulations around data storage.
Cybercrime costs reached about $600 billion globally in 2017, or 0.8 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product, according to a report by McAfee and Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The cloud security solution "gives businesses the ability to better protect valuable information from cyber attacks by enforcing policies with enhanced visibility of data and user behaviour across cloud services and devices to stop security threats,” said Nigel Hawthorn, director of cloud security at McAfee for Europe Middle East and Africa.