RIYADH: Companies in Saudi Arabia and globally should be made to attest they have up-to-date cyber defenses, according to the CEO of a leading digital security company which revealed in a research that a third of computer users in Saudi Arabia were targeted by cyber criminals in 2022.
Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and cofounder of Kaspersky, an IT security company with 4,000 employees, told Arab News in an exclusive interview that governments should introduce regulations for cybersecurity systems and require businesses to adhere to the related guidelines in the same way they do for fire hazards regulations.
His comments came after research by his firm showed that since January of this year, as much as a third of users in the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa region were affected by online and offline threats.
Offline threats are malware spread in local networks by USBs or other offline means, whereas online threats are malware or fraud that use the Web.
Saudi Arabia ranked third in the region, with 33.3 percent of users facing such issues, preceded by Qatar at 39.8 percent and Bahrain at 36.5 percent.
When it comes to offline threats, Saudi Arabia had the lowest number with 32 percent affected users. Whereas Egypt, Qatar and Jordan had the highest numbers with 42.4 percent, 33.9 percent and 33.2 percent respectively.
Critical infrastructure industries such as manufacturing, oil and mining, and chemicals were flagged as facing increasingly targeted attacks, with Kaspersky data showing that 43 percent of industrial computers were targeted in the META region in the first three quarters of this year.
Reacting to the research, Kaspersky called for cybersecurity to be added to the key performance indicators of publicly and privately owned companies.
He said: “Twenty-five years ago, computers were typing machines, then the ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
