Cyber fraudsters to focus on remote, cloud-based systems in UAE next year: Trend Micro

American-Japanese multinational cybersecurity software company Trend Micro predicts that the UAE’s home network, remote working software, and cloud systems will be at the center of a new wave of cyberattacks in 2021.

The cybersecurity company made its forecast in a report entitled “Turning the Tide” that cybercriminals will especially look at home networks in 2021 as a crucial launch pad for compromising corporate IT and IoT (Internet of Things) networks.

According to its Midyear Security Report, Trend Microsystems revealed a combined 13,100,616 email, URL, and malware cyber threats during the first half of 2020, illustrating the increasing risk of cyber-attacks. The ransomware attacks in the UAE accounts for 4.27 percent of the world’s ransomware attacks.

The report warns that end-users who frequently access sensitive data would be at the highest risk (e.g. HR professionals who access employee data, sales managers who deal with sensitive customer details, or senior executives who handle confidential business numbers).

The company said that access-as-a-service cybercrime business models will expand, targeting high-value employees’ home networks, corporate IT, and IoT networks.

The IT security teams need to revise work from home policies to tackle the complexity of hybrid environments, where work and personal data come into a single machine. Zero-trust approaches will increasingly be favored to empower and secure distributed workforces.

“As the UAE begins to enter a post-pandemic world, the trend for remote and hybrid working is likely going to continue for many organizations. In 2021, we predict that cybercriminals will launch more aggressive attacks to target corporate data and networks in the UAE. The UAE’s security teams will need to double down on user training, extended detection and response, and adaptive access controls. This past year, many UAE organizations were focused on surviving: now it’s time for the UAE’s organizations to thrive, with comprehensive cloud security as their foundation.”

Trend Micro also cautioned that exposed APIs (application programming interface) would become a new favorite attack vector for cybercriminals, providing access to confidential consumer data, source code, and back-end services.

Trend Micro

Trend Micro is an IT security company with global headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, and Irving, Texas, United States, with regional headquarters and R&D centers in Asia, Europe, and North America.

The firm develops enterprise security software for servers, containers, & cloud computing environments, networks, and endpoints. Its cloud and virtualization security products provide automated security for customers of VMware, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.