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Study finds 60 per cent of UAE organisations expect to suffer from an email-borne attack

Security

Mimecast, an email and data security company, has revealed that 60 per cent of organisations in the UAE believe that they will suffer from an email-borne attack in the coming year

The data company unveiled the findings in its fourth-annual State of Email Security 2020 report.

This report summarises details from 1,025 global IT decision-makers on the current state of cybersecurity. Providing y-o-y comparisons, along with Mimecast’s analysis from the first 100-day period of the coronavirus public health crisis, the report is designed to both offer valuable insights into recent attack trends organisations are challenged with and to serve as a guide to drive continuous improvement to any organization’s cyber resilience strategy.

The findings in this year’s report demonstrate that despite high levels of confidence in respondents’ cyber resilience strategies, there is a clear need for improvement. The large majority (77 per cent) of global respondents say they have or are actively rolling out a cyber resilience strategy. In the UAE, 80 per cent of respondents are doing the same. UAE respondents cite data loss (54 per cent), a decrease in employee productivity (40 per cent) and business downtime (24 per cent) due to a lack of cyber resilience preparedness.

Joshua Douglas, vice-president of threat intelligence, said, “We’re seeing the same threats that organisations have faced for years playing out with tactics matched to world events to evade detection. The increases in remote working due to the global pandemic have only amplified the risks businesses face from these threats, making the need for effective cyber resilience essential.

“It’s likely that cyber resilience strategies are lacking key elements, or do not have any at all, depending on the organisation’s maturity in cybersecurity. Security leaders need to invest in a strategy that builds resilience, moving at the same pace as digital transformation. This means organisations must apply a layered approach to email security, one that consists of attack prevention, security awareness training, roaming web security tied to email efficacy, brand exploitation protection, threat remediation, and business continuity.”