A survey has shown that Qatar and other GCC countries are leading the world in the use of managed security services (MSS) for cyber defence.
Middle East companies, already leading the world in the use of managed security services to protect networks from cyber threats, are poised for the next step in the evolution of cybersecurity: proactive threat-hunting, in which cyber defenders seek to stop threats before they do damage, according to a Raytheon company-sponsored survey.
The global survey titled “Don’t Wait: The Evolution of Proactive Threat Hunting” reveals leading-edge trends in the evolution of managed security services from reactive to proactive.
About 60% of companies interviewed in the region, including Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman, plan to use MSS in the next year, more than their counterparts in North America, Europe or the Asia Pacific region.
Middle East organisations use managed security service providers at a higher rate than in other parts of the world, with 57% of the region’s organisations already using MSS providers, a much higher rate than in Europe and Asia Pacific.
While adoption rates are high, many of the MSS services used in the region need to be supplemented with newer approaches. MSS has traditionally been reactive: anti-virus, firewalls, intrusion detection and sandbox technologies. Today, proactive hunting can effectively find sophisticated and damaging threats.
“The information and communications technology industry is experiencing a clear global shift from reactive to proactive strategies to safeguard and minimise the impact of cyber threats,” said Dave Amsler, president, Raytheon Foreground Security, while delivering a keynote speech at the Kingdom Cyber Security Forum in Riyadh.
The other key findings of the survey include:
· Sixty-five per cent of Middle East information security officials believe that MSS is essential to a sound information security strategy and strongly view it as a strategic priority to alleviate cyber threats
· A key challenge for Middle Eastern companies is the difficulty of finding MSSPs that support and integrate with the company’s systems and requirements
· A majority of executives in the Middle East (55%) believe that the MSS concerns are shifting from information technology to the line of business, realising the substantial impact of effective MSSP across all business functions.
Conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the survey covered some 19 countries across North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia.