Top cybersecurity trends businesses need to know about

For business owners, cybersecurity can be a daunting topic. Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, shutting down countries, cities and companies across the globe and indeed the Middle East and Africa (MEA). In fact, businesses in the Middle East are more prone to cyber-attacks than companies anywhere else in the world.

Cybersecurity efforts have increased as a result. In the Middle East and Africa, the cybersecurity market is expected to grow from $5.38 billion in 2017 to $12.54 billion by 2023. These efforts, according to Microsoft’s most recent Security Intelligence Report, are starting to pay off.

The report shows that in 2018, organisations across the world experienced a 73 percent decrease in encounters with ransomware – a malware that locks or encrypts computers, then demanding money to restore access. The Middle East and Africa was no exception – Turkey’s monthly ransomware encounter rate, for example, averaged 0.06 percent.

But, while there has been a decline in the rate of ransomware encounters, it doesn’t necessarily mean organisations in the Middle East and Africa are in the clear.

War against ransomware is not over

Locations with the lowest ransomware encounter rates – namely Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom – tend to communicate with their citizens about basic security. They also have mature cybersecurity infrastructures and well-established programmes for protecting critical infrastructure.

Countries in the MEA region, such as Ethiopia and Cameroon – which rank among the top five countries most impacted by ransomware – can adopt these techniques more aggressively to protect their citizens and continue the decline in ransomware encounters.

Cryptocurrency mining emerges as a threat

Meanwhile, 2018 saw the rise of another stealthy threat in the form of cryptomining malware.

In fact, the average worldwide monthly cryptocurrency coin mining encounter rate was 0.12 percent, compared to just 0.05 percent for ransomware.

Mining for cryptocurrency is a lucrative past time for hackers, but it consumes massive computing resources. To overcome this challenge, hackers infect unsuspecting users’ computers with malware so that they can use the collective processing power of all their victims’ machines to mine for coins.

And unlike ransomware, cryptocurrency mining does not require user input – it’s able to work in the background while the user is performing other tasks or is away from their computer. In other words, they won’t necessarily notice its presence at all unless their system’s performance is significantly compromised.

In the Middle East and Africa, cryptocurrency mining is particularly prevalent. Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia account for three of the top five nations most impacted by cryptocurrency mining, with encounter rates well above the global average at 5.58, 1.83 and 1.13 respectively. Nations in the region can up the ante in the fight against cryptojacking by educating citizens on ways to defend themselves against these kinds of attacks.

Software supply chains at risk

The increased number of software supply chain attacks over the past few years is another trend business should keep their eye on.

Supply chain attacks target software developers and suppliers, infecting their legitimate apps with malware. These apps are then distributed to the suppliers’ users where the malicious code can run with the same permissions as the trusted software.

The threat of supply chain attacks is an industry-wide problem that requires attention from multiple stakeholders, including the software developers and vendors who write the code, the system administrators who manage software installations, as well as the information security community that finds these attacks and creates solutions to protect people and software from them.

Phishing still prevails

Technology is getting better at detecting phishing. Using advanced analytics, programmes such as Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, Microsoft Cloud App Security and Office 365 Threat Intelligence, can help organisations mitigate against attacks more effectively. Businesses can also respond to breaches more quickly through automated investigation and response tools like Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection.

But, despite these measures, phishing continues to be a threat because it takes advantage of human behaviour. In fact, according to the Security Intelligence Report, the share of inbound emails that were phishing messages increased 250 percent between January and December 2018.

Attackers will continue to use and advance social engineering techniques because of the success they generate. They also now use domain name spoofing to impersonate emails, making them look like they come from known brands or colleagues, also creating catchy subject lines to entice users to click open emails. Very targeted spear phishing has proven to be a particularly successful approach, especially in business email compromise scams.

Learn more

To improve cybersecurity in the Middle East and Africa, it is important for organisations to be aware of the trends and threats impacting their network. Reports such as Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report are beneficial because they suggest security best practices and controls to assist countries in the fight against cybercrime.

To download the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report 2018, click here.

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