Page 84 - SAMENA Trends - July-August 2022

REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

ers having experienced average speeds of of 743 Mbps in UAE, 713.4 Mbps in Qatar is continuing to advance across the GCC. In
316.8 Mbps, ahead of Qatar and Kuwait. and 663.7 Mbps in Kuwait. The UAE also all six markets, users experience much im-
The three countries lead the region for 5G took the first place for 5G games experience proved speeds and video experience using
peak download speed as well, with a score with a score of 74 on a 100-point scale. “5G 5G, OpenSignal said in its report.

UAE All Set for Comprehensive Digital Transformation

The UAE government is all set for a competitiveness, flexibility and digital to the digitization of government services,
comprehensive digital transformation, alignment” between projects and digital business and operations, among others.
with a new federal committee announced systems in federal government agencies. Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State
on Monday. Approved by the UAE Cabinet, To enhance efficiency, the committee for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy
the ‘Higher Committee for Government will be responsible for issuing guiding and Remote Work Applications, will serve
Digital Transformation’ will be chaired by components for strategic projects related as the Vice-Chairman of the committee.
Ohood Khalfan Al Roumi, Minister of State
for Government Development and The
Future. A strategy announced earlier this
year aims to double the contribution of
the digital economy to the country’s GDP
from 9.7 per cent to 19.4 per cent within
10 years. The strategy included more than
30 initiatives and programmes targeting
six sectors and five new areas of growth.
The committee will help raise the efficiency
of the use of infrastructure and digital
assets. It will enhance integration between
government agencies and institutions. It
will supervise and guide the development
of the “digital ecosystem” for the UAE
government. It will enhance the “readiness,

10 million Cybersecurity Threats Detected and Blocked in Oman

Trend Micro solutions detected and blocked as well as remote locations with unsecured ing their focus to critical businesses and
over 4.1mn email threats, 700,607 mal- public networks,” he added. Arabi said that industries more likely to pay, and double
ware attacks, and over 4.6mn URL victims’ the annual cybersecurity report provides extortion tactics ensure that they are able
attacks in Oman in 2021, according to its the country’s enterprises with the insights to profit. Ransomware-as-a-service offer-
annual cybersecurity report. Furthermore, they need to readjust their security stance ings have opened the market to cybercrim-
it shielded remote learning and working, and prompts them to adopt industry-lead- inals with limited technical knowledge, as
Smart Home Network (SHN) solutions pro- ing innovations securing their digital jour- well as given rise to more specialization,
tected devices and networks from 12,821 neys. Trend Micro Incorporated, a global such as initial access brokers who are now
SHN inbound and outbound attacks and leader in cybersecurity solutions, released an essential part of the cybercrime sup-
prevented 581,119 SHN events. “Oman’s its 2021 annual cybersecurity report – Nav- ply chain. Threat actors are getting better
enterprises continue to display digital resil- igating New Frontiers – highlighting the at exploiting human error to compromise
ience through the challenges of unforeseen growing rate of cyber attacks by malicious cloud infrastructure and remote workers.
global events and have bravely faced an actors on digital infrastructures and indi- Homeworkers are often prone to take more
evolving threat landscape with increasing- viduals in the modern-day hybrid work en- risks than those in the office, which makes
ly sophisticated attacks,” said Assad Arabi, vironment. The report states that globally phishing a greater risk. According to the
managing director of Gulf Cluster at Trend Trend Micro solutions stopped over 94.2bn report, better readiness for security teams
Micro. “The modern-day, hybrid world has threats in 2021, a 42 per cent increase in against emerging threats is necessary
made it difficult for organizations to protect the number of detections recorded in 2020. across sectors. With these related insights,
their digital environment, requiring security Attacks had surged over 53bn in the sec- Oman seeks improvement within the move-
teams to bolster their security strategies to ond half of 2021, blocking 41bn threats in ment against the threat landscape going
protect employees in and out of the office, H1 2021. Ransomware attackers are shift- forward.

84 JULY-AUGUST 2022