Inayat-ur-Rahman, Business Editor

Forescout Technologies, a global leader in automated cybersecurity, say that organizations typically have dozens of IT and security products operating independently without sufficient device context or the ability to take action to respond to security risks and threats. This creates alert fatigue in security operations center (SOC) teams, gives attackers more time to exploit vulnerabilities, and increases the blast radius of threats.

“Today, digital transformation and the rapid growth of IoT devices across organizations, as well as the convergence of IT and OT networks is encouraging the rise of ransomware-as-a-service gangs. Cybersecurity is a critical component for any organization and without it, they cannot sustain themselves, let alone grow,” commented Hassan El Karhani, the newly appointed general manager for Forescout, Middle East, Turkey, and Africa.

“Being cyber resilient means having the context for operational vulnerabilities and asset owners is important because this means being able to manage risk around an actual threat happening or the probability of that threat happening,” added El Karhani.

Here in the region, due to the nature of their business, these industries have the highest level of exposure: Finance and Banking are at the top of the list, mainly due to the value of the information and financial assets they handle.  This is followed by Governments, which are most at risk from hacktivists. OT Centric Industries / Critical Infrastructures are also vulnerable, and this includes Energy and Utilities, because threat actors know that any disruption to the energy sector and utilities can have widespread consequences, making it a high-priority target.

Healthcare is also a high-risk industry. The sensitivity of personal and medical data stored by healthcare organizations, along with the potential for disruption to critical health services, make this industry highly vulnerable.  Another key industry is telecommunications.