Page 87 - SAMENA Trends - February 2020

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

ARTICLE

Global Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience are Key to

Growth and Innovation

Cyber risks extend far beyond the
telecommunications and media sectors;
industry in general, including other operators

of critical infrastructure – is vulnerable to
the various threats posed by malicious cyber
actors.

Internet and data driven services are the engines of the modern global
economy. Consumers and businesses alike depend on the seamless
integration and widespread availability of digital infrastructure for
routine personal and commercial exchanges across several different
platforms and devices, and increasingly across borders. As our global
dependence on digital technologies continues to increase, leaders in
governments and business must address cybersecurity concerns in
order to build on the progress and prosperity that the digital economy
has offered to date.
In a study published last year, 200 global CEOs identified cybersecurity
as the top near-term threat to the global economy. These concerns
come at a time when a greater share of the global economy, our
infrastructure, and daily life is being transformed by digitization. For
example, Cisco estimates that there will be over 28 billion networked
devices by 2022 – over half of which will support various Internet of
Things (IoT) applications. In order to usher in the next wave of growth
and innovation, connected societies across the Middle East and North Ghazi Almihdar
Africa (MENA) and around the world must take steps to ensure that Director – MEA External & Regulatory Affairs
sensitive information is protected from misuse, abuse, and destruction. AT&T

At AT&T, cybersecurity and cyber resilience are business imperatives.
Our company provides customers around the world with connectivity,
technology, entertainment, news, advertising and more in more than
220 countries and territories, including business enterprise services
to countries representing over 99 percent of the world’s economy.
What’s more, on an average day our global network carries over
335 petabytes of data traffic. Just as the continued growth of data
creation around the world seems assured, so too does the constant

87 FEBRUARY 2020