Middle East businesses prioritise unification and automation

REGIONAL NEWS

According to the State of the Market Report 2023 from Help AG, organisations across the Middle East are prioritising automation and consolidation of their cybersecurity estates

As the cybersecurity arm of e& enterprise, Help AG’s report is the only one of its kind to focus exclusively on digital security in the Middle East region. The 2023 report focused on how organisations can innovate their technology and processes and automate playbooks and operations to elevate their cybersecurity posture.

It also highlighted a number of trends for organisations to be aware of in 2023 and beyond to ensure they stay ahead of the curve:

Integrated cyber defense: With threats becoming more numerous, persistent and sophisticated, there is a need for contextualising all data points into a single action thread as a comprehensive defense against threats.

Secure cloud enablement: Ensuring a secure cloud posture involves identifying and remediating security issues, managing and securing access to cloud resources, and complying with regulations and industry standards.

Security services edge: One of the key considerations while adopting security services at the edge in the Middle East is the growing importance of data privacy and the need for local content inspection.

Data and identity protection: Identity has become the new security perimeter. Adversaries are also reciprocating by targeting identities and gaps in governance. A very strong Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) practice will become a core requirement of security operations, and we can expect to see more focus and more investment in this area in 2023.

Internet of Things security: The IoT is the future, and organisations should aim to achieve comprehensive visibility and perform asset discovery, creating solid baseline measures for security in IoT devices, including security from the start of IoT project planning, adopting a strong zero-trust strategy, and enabling SecOps to detect, prevent and mitigate security incidents.