WINNING IN THE CYBER BATTLEGROUND

INCREASED DIGITISATION HAS TRANSFORMED PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE SECTOR ORGANISATIONS. WITH THREAT ACTORS USING INCREASINGLY SOPHISTICATED TECHNOLOGIES AND STRATEGIES, SECURITY CORRESPONDENT DANIEL BARDSLEY SPEAKS TO INDUSTRY EXPERTS ON WHY GULF STATES NEED TO BOOST THEIR COLLABORATION WITH PRIVATE ENTERPRISES TO WIN THE FIGHT AGAINST CYBERCRIMINALS.

Cyberwarfare is now sometimes described as the fifth dimension of human conflict. There is air, sea, land, space and, now, the cyber realm, where nations are employing their technological expertise in an effort to disrupt rivals – sometimes to devastating effect.

Myriad governments have fallen victim to attacks, some thought to have been perpetrated or backed by nation-states.

From nearly a decade ago, when the French Ministry of Finance suffered a malware attack at the time of a Paris G20 summit, through to 2019, when local authorities in the United Kingdom were reportedly suffering hundreds of attempted cyber-attacks every hour, the risk of disruption to governments and their critical infrastructure and services has never been far away.

Russia has been blamed for attacks on Ukraine, for example, including the 2017 NotPetya incident, which disrupted numerous government agencies and went on to spread widely. The secretive North Korean government is another regime thought to be a major source of cyber offensives.

In this climate it is no surprise that governments are prioritising cybersecurity. Singapore, for example, recently announced that it was setting aside $1 billion (Dh2.63 billion) over the next three years to improve government cyber and data security.

As a region affected by a complex web of tensions, the Middle East has inevitably had its share of politically motivated cyber incidents in recent years.

Among them was the disruption caused by the Stuxnet computer worm, which is thought to have been partly developed by the United States.