GITEX has remained an important stage for technology and cybersecurity, bringing together industry professionals, decision-makers, and leading organizations to transform the way we utilize today’s innovations. It allows us to have a glimpse of what is to come and how we live, work, and operate in the future, said Trend Micro’s KSA’s Country Manager Rasheed Alodah in a recent question and answer session. Here are the excerpts: Q: What is the significance of a platform like GITEX for Trend Micro and the cybersecurity industry? A: GITEX has remained an important stage for technology and cybersecurity, bringing together industry professionals, decision-makers, and leading organizations to transform the way we utilize today’s innovations. It allows us to have a glimpse of what is to come and how we live, work, and operate in the future. A platform of this stature provides us an opportunity to exchange best practices, insights, innovations and allows us to significantly increase the awareness of cybersecurity, as well as strategies organizations can leverage to fulfil their digital ambitions. Throughout the Kingdom and the region, enterprises must consistently safeguard their digital assets, networks, and overall infrastructure against rising attacks from ransomware and advanced persistent threats, and consistently monitor increased vulnerabilities as today’s attack surface continues to expand. This makes GITEX the opportune occasion for enterprises to obtain essential knowledge and prepare for the future of technological advancements and adoption with Trend Micro’s leading, robust, and cutting-edge cybersecurity technology. Organizations can be empowered to accelerate their digital ambitions by building upon cybersecurity awareness, reassessing strategies, and adopting solutions that enhance their security posture. Q: GITEX 2022 is about entering the next digital universe. Apart from safeguarding digital experiences, how is cybersecurity impacting business growth in Saudi Arabia? A: Organizations in the country have faced numerous cyber security challenges that have brought a great impact on business expansion and created barriers to growth in the past couple of years. New technologies that helped people maintain efficiency and productivity, through remote and hybrid work, have unfortunately created several vulnerabilities, which has opened the doors to a rising number of cyber threats. Fortunately, the current threat landscape has been faced with an astute approach to bolstering cybersecurity strategies. With actionable insights and adopting multi-layered solutions that have the power to significantly improve protection and business flow have been key to placing businesses back on track. Additionally, these improvements have allowed businesses to successfully implement new digital transformation projects. In fact, global digital transformation project spending will reach $2.8 trillion by 2025. As mentioned, organizations continue to create a safe environment for remote and hybrid workplaces, which will require further investment and protection to facilitate the way businesses operate in the modern digital era. By utilizing the advanced security innovations, companies can also securely adopt practices that provide agility through cloud-based systems and online exchange of crucial information and transactions. Today’s risks and threats are affecting both larger enterprises and SMBs throughout the country. Small businesses are the backbone of the economy, and their priorities are to retain steady growth with the best strategies and protection. If proper cybersecurity procedures are not in place, smaller enterprises will find it difficult to expand their businesses. Sensitive company data, as well as financial and customer information, will continue to be targeted by cybercriminals with older or newer methods of attack. As the 2022 Trend Micro Midyear Report highlights, new ransomware groups are mainly targeting small businesses with up to 200 employees and medium-sized businesses with up to 1,000 employees. Today’s standards of cybersecurity resources are critical for an organization’s growth, as it supports enterprises to scale, safeguard digital operations from sophisticated cybercrimes, and encourage the use of more IoT devices and other advanced technologies that are capable of streamlining supply chains. Q: How is the threat landscape evolving in Saudi Arabia? A: As stated in the latest 2022 Midyear Cybersecurity Report, Trend Micro’s solutions have protected the Kingdom’s organizations by detecting and blocking over 28 million email threats, nearly 14 million malware attacks, and close to 6 million URL victims’ attacks. If you compare this to the global numbers, it is clear to see that the country has been reinforcing resilience by securing its infrastructure, and this is due to the proactive planning of strengthening its digital capabilities. Globally, our solutions have protected organizations from over 63 billion threats in 2022 — a 52% increase from 2021. It is a pleasure to see organizations in the Kingdom continue to build resilience and overcome modern-day, sophisticated cyber-attacks with the latest and most powerful cybersecurity solutions from Trend Micro. Q: Which type of cyber threats do organizations need to be aware of in today’s digital era? A: In Saudi Arabia, security teams will have to stay alert to ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) and malware-as-a-service (MaaS) threats. These threats have increased in the last several months with additional ongoing battles with cryptomining and potential threats of new digital experiences like the metaverse. Enterprises across the nation will have to adopt robust security solutions that are essential to maintaining levels of productivity and creating a clear path to accelerated growth. Moreover, cyberwarfare has been making headlines throughout the world, reaching an unexpected level of prominence in today’s world of hyper-connected critical infrastructure. From inflation to supply chain issues, preparedness is crucial because the attack surface continues to expand and is made more difficult to mitigate risks by the rapidly evolving threat landscape. Q: With the rapid adoption of advanced technology by the country’s enterprises, what are some of the major security challenges will they need to overcome going forward? A: Throughout 2022, there has been a rise of cloud threats, more sophisticated ransomware threats, bad actors repurposing older vulnerabilities and exploiting new ones, IoT threats, supply chain attacks, and commodity attacks, where cloud-heavy small to medium-sized businesses are becoming easier to target. The cloud remains a major priority for enterprises across industries, as they continue to fully migrate to the cloud. This creates opportunities for malicious actors to take advantage of growing vulnerabilities and require security teams to constantly monitor activities in the cloud, while bad actors wait for the right moment within the stages of digitalizing businesses. According to the Trend Micro Security Predictions for 2022, spending on cloud services will reach $482 billion by the end of this year, which is a 54% increase from 2020’s $313 billion. And as IoT adoption increases and hybrid workforces evolve, these critical areas will require solutions that provide intrusion prevention and detection systems, network forensics tools, and other heightened detection and response (XDR) capabilities. Challenges will always present themselves with the introduction of new digital experiences, such as the Metaverse, NFT risks, financial fraud, privacy breaches, and much more. The key to fully realizing the potential of new technology will be determined by how enterprises and communities prioritize cybersecurity practices and how every experience in the digital world must be scrutinized every step of the way.