Thursday, May 19, 2016
Dubai: The surge in cybercrimes indicates that there are gaps in “infrastructure capabilities” that do not rival the evolving methodologies adopted by cybercriminals to circumvent security measures, an industry expert said.
Peter Tran, senior director of worldwide advanced cyber defence practice at RSA, the security division of EMC, told Gulf News that with the recent attacks on banks in the region, the cyber security infrastructure itself shows that maturity is not enough.
With cybercriminals identifying new methods to compromise organisational networks and devices, it is imperative to “overhaul the IT infrastructure” by deploying integrated IT security solutions.
“The system is still vulnerable and hackers go for the vulnerability. The region is getting importance due to high net-worth customers, similar to Singapore. The trend is moving in that direction and that does not mean that banks are not investing in security but the level of sophistication has increased,” he said.
Tran said the technology to combat attacks is there but the “design and the implementation” are the challenge areas. The technology is the easiest part but it is how you put it into the system.
Data analytics have been around for a long time and it is “gaining traction” globally, take the case of Visa. They use analytics to know the difference between “normal and abnormal” activities. Data science analytics are used in social media to understand the relationships between people. Now, it is used to understand the attackers and how they interact with the networks.
He praised the UAE for doing a great job in cyber infrastructure in the face of growing cyber threats and he said that it is going to get better.
According to United Nations International Telecommunications Union’s “Global Cybersecurity Index”, the UAE is ranked 17th in the world, leapfrogging many European countries. The index measures cybersecurity aspects such as legislation, regulation and compliance, capacity building, and international cooperation.
“The UAE needs to deploy tools that enable organisations to transform from implementing a reactive practice to a proactive approach, curbing cyber risks across the internal and external enterprise landscape,” he said.
The “evolving trends” for this year are mobility, cloud, internet of everything and ransomware. The IoT devices are a very concerning area for the security industry as a whole.
“We are looking for behaviours that are suspicious, looking at the telemetry of what is considered normal and not normal. The real concern is disruption across multiple connected IoT devices, such as mobile phones, wearable devices and embedded medical devices,” he said.
He said that ransomware is getting worse and it is expected to grow further.
By Naushad K. Cherrayil Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2016. All rights reserved.
