Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen had different rates of economic growth. Development is impacted by various growth strategies, policies, and targets across nations.

With this new sectors have emerged after the COVID pandemic which is still in its infancy, and not as developed as others, allowing one to look for an option for attracting investments. Below are some details about the sectors that are today one of the most successful, developing, and attractive for investments.

Infrastructure
One of the main forces behind the Middle East economy is its infrastructure. The Middle East countries are placing a lot of emphasis on this sector’s development and, as a result, are spending a lot of money on renewable energy, urban transportation, and road maintenance. Particularly the steel sector has swiftly developed into a reliable choice for investors looking for sector fund prospects.

If you have knowledge about infrastructure and want to do an investment then UAE is the best place to look, as UAE offers numerous opportunities for expansion and establishment.

As of early 2017, Dubai had over 3,200 ongoing projects worth USD 245 billion. When the Expo 2022 arrived, the construction projects contributed to USD 42.5 billion.

Real Estate
According to a Deloitte report, the Middle East real estate market would expand by up to 111% during the following five years. Additionally, there are more opportunities in this industry due to the rising interest in foreign investment and tourism.

The report stated that the average property price in Dubai and Abu Dhabi increased by 11.3% and 1.5% respectively this year. In the first quarter of 2022, Dubai saw an average rental gain of 10.5% in the retail sector, whereas Abu Dhabi saw a gain of 7.8%.

Fintech
The majority of financial services are now provided by fintech, which has in some cases taken the place of traditional banks. As a result, this industry attracted the most acquisitions and investments.

The volume of digital services worldwide surpassed USD 8 trillion in 2021, and the Arab Monetary Fund’s chairman of the board of directors estimates the figure will surpass USD 10 trillion by 2027. Additionally, a record USD 3.45 billion is predicted for the regional industry in 2026. In April 2022, startups in the area working in this industry were successful in obtaining USD 9.8 million in funding.

E-commerce
COVID has boosted people’s reliance on e-commerce websites, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, which has speed up the growth of these sites and the expansion of the services they provide.

On Forbes’ list of “The 50 Most Funded Startups in the Middle East and North Africa for 2021”, the e-commerce industry came in second place with 11 companies.

Startups in this industry provided 85% of the total fundraising value in April 2022. Therefore, choosing to start a business is a wise choice because it will undoubtedly continue to develop.

Artificial Intelligence
When we suggest that artificial intelligence is running every aspect of our lives, we might not be exaggerating. For instance, by 2031, the UAE wants to rely entirely on artificial intelligence for services and data processing. By 2031, the state is anticipated to generate roughly 300 billion dirhams in revenue or 13.6% of the GDP.

According to Gartner, Global AI software sales are anticipated to reach USD 62.5 billion in 2023, up 21.3% from 2022. These figures indicate a bright future for the industry, therefore it makes sense to focus on it because of the market’s high development prospects, especially given how heavily most developed countries rely on this technology.

Cyber Security
There is no doubt that the concern over cyber security has spread to all businesses and even nations due to the possibility of their critical data being compromised.

According to IBM, over the previous year, the average cost of a data breach climbed from USD 3.86 million to USD 4.24 million. Additionally, complex cybersecurity and data protection toolkits are being sought after to be replaced by a single unified interface by 71% of Saudi and 70% of Emirati businesses, respectively. Consequently, starting a business in this industry has never been more profitable or in demand than it is now.

Healthcare
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the significance of the healthcare and hospitality industries has received more emphasis.

The Middle East offers a variety of chances in this industry, and its infrastructure has been established to make it easier for anyone who wants to start a business in this industry. The important thing is to get licenses and approval to start a business in Middle East countries.

Metaverse
We have reached the most crucial point now that the metaverse has permeated the real world and has established a significant presence in the commercial markets.

As a result, most multinational corporations have entered this market, particularly those in the Gulf. Big IT firms believe that the “Metaverse” is the Internet’s unavoidable future and that it will be worth USD 800 billion by 2024. Thus, getting started in this industry early may prove to be a virtual guarantee of success.

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In a media statement, Leif Lindback, Senior Managing Director of CVC Capital Partners told the media, “Acronis’ talented management and R&D teams have invested significant resources developing an innovative cloud-native ‘MSP in a box’ solution, with integrated backup, disaster recovery, cybersecurity, remote management, and workflow tools. Acronis provides mission-critical solutions to more than 10,000 MSPs and half a million small and medium businesses. CVC has a strong track record in cybersecurity and partnering up with successful entrepreneurs and we are looking forward to teaming up with Serguei Beloussov and the Acronis team to accelerate the company’s growth.”

With regard to the latest funding round, Acronis co-founder and CEO Serguei Beloussov said in an interview, “Last year definitely pushed customers to understand that IT is mission critical and that is for every business.”

Acronis does not plan to go public, however, “We’ve always considered New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ as a primary market,” Beloussov said.

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The data security firm has entered into a distributorship agreement to expand its cyber security portfolio and global footprint.

TopTel is committed to providing communications and network security solutions through a wide range of sector resellers. It has subsidiaries in Belgium, Azerbaijan, Cyprus and Netherlands.

 TopTel CEO, Fikret Aydogan, said in a statement, “With effective cyber-risk management, businesses can achieve smarter, faster and more connected futures, driving business growth.  As cyber threats to business continue to evolve, public- and private-sector leaders will have to address them in the digital and physical worlds, to mitigate any potential harm to individuals and avoid the disruption of critical services. The partnership between TopTel and Certes Networks aims to provide vehicles for dialogue and decision-making and to enable information security teams to become more agile and responsive to business needs.” 

Certes has established a global presence in Europe, the Middle East and APac. The partnership between TopTel and Certes Networks seeks to enable information security teams to become robust and responsive to business needs. 

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The deal to buy Help AG will help Etisalat become more resilient and protect its cloud, IoT, AI and big data line of business against sophisticated cyber threats.

The deal between Etisalat and Help AG will also see the creation of the region’s most prominent cyber security unit.

With regard to the acquisition, Salvador Anglada, Group Chief Business Officer at Etisalat told the media, “Help AG has established itself as the region’s trusted security advisor. With cybersecurity playing a fundamental role in all aspects of digital business today, this acquisition fits perfectly into our strategy of being a key enabler of secure, seamless and effective digital transformation for our customers.”

We have full trust and confidence that Help AG’s leadership will effectively add value to our security portfolio and amplify the cyber security capabilities of our clients.”

Last year, Etisalat signed an agreement to acquire Help AG’s business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. During the same period, Etisalat entered into a partnership with First Abu Dhabi Bank and Avanza Innovations to jointly develop a digital platform to digitalise trade in the UAE.

Initially, the platform will focus on addressing the risks of double financing and invoice fraud and later shift its focus to key areas of trade finance.

During the first half of 2019, Etisalat’s subscriber base in the region reached 12.4 million. Its overall subscriber base reached 143 million, which is a 2 percent increase year-on-year.

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Organisations are operating in an environment where they are increasingly exposing their digital assets to the public. The conduits for this are wide ranging from email to mobile apps to social media networks such as Facebook.

There have been plenty of recent examples that highlight how businesses must learn to combat this growing menace. British Airways suffered a recent attack where a data breach affected 380,000 transactions.

Another incident involved Ticketmaster, where after a hack attack 35 of digital bank Monzo’s customers complained of fraudulent transactions on their credits cards, having used their cards with the ticket sales company.

Recently, credit monitoring service Equifax were fined £500,000 by the UK’s Information Commissioners Office. This was after a compromise of data which effected 15 million UK citizens, globally 146 million records from the company were also stolen in a major data breach last year.

Cyber security company Mimecast conducted an email security risk assessment, where 142 million emails were inspected. All of the emails progressed through organisations email security vendors.

Overall Mimecast discovered 203,000 malicious links, alongside 13,176 dangerous file types, 15,656 malware attachments, and 41,605 impersonation attacks slipping through previously undetected.

Steve Malone, Mimecast’s director of security product management, said: “Email remains a pressing threat to every organisations’ overall cyber security posture for the simple reasons of scale and frequency.”

“That’s then further exacerbated by the fact employees can become complacent to the numerous threats that could be lying in wait, from simple phishing to targeted impersonation attacks, and ransomware hiding in common attachments.”

Research carried out by solutions provider Kroll, revealed that an eye-watering 88% of cyberattacks in the UK over a two-year period was caused by human error.

The most frequent error was sending information to the wrong party via email majority of the time. “Unfortunately, traditional security awareness programmes have often failed to improve employees’ security skills and training has been more of tick-box approach to compliance,” added Malone.

Mimecast’s own State of Email Security Report found that 80% of companies are not confident of their employees’ ability to fend off ransomware. Alarmingly only 11% said that they continually upgraded employees’ training to spot cyberattacks. The current conditions ask questions of what businesses and cyber security firms intend to do next to reduce the cyberattack risk. For example, many software vendors employ security researchers to ensure that systems are kept secure, through responsible disclosure schemes.

RiskIQ, a cyber resilience company based in San Francisco, recently analysed the date breaches experienced by British Airways. And identified credit card skimming group Magecart as the culprit, as they were for the Ticketmaster data infringement.

Fabien Libeau, vice president of RiskIQ for EMEA, explained: “RiskIQ operates on the open Internet to provide organisations with an ‘outside-in’ view of threats and vulnerabilities, that complement their existing security investments in perimeter defence and endpoint protection.”

Libeau also reflected that the company is seeking to drive the debate forward over the potential threats that organisations face from the internet. “We do that in a variety of ways; directly with arge organisations, through involvement in industry bodies and through our regular content such as blogs, where we highlight the latest threat actor trends and tactics,” he enthused.

There are regulations that are in force that compels businesses to brush up on their cyber security competence. Across the European Union there is the directive of security and information systems.

The regulation is aimed at operators of essential services and digital service providers, who are required to secure their network and information systems. Appropriate measures must be taken to minimise the effect of security breaches, and to consider the latest potential system risks. The directive targeted sectors that rely heavily on information and communications technology.

Specifically, energy, transport, health, water, and digital infrastructure. Additionally, in 2016 the EU General Data Protection Regulation was agreed and enforced upon.

The legislation is designed to harmonise data privacy laws across Europe, empower all EU citizens’ data privacy, and reshape the way that organisations view and approach data privacy.

It is hoped that in the future it will be increasingly recognised that cyber security should be a central pillar throughout an organisation, as opposed to a background or “add on” issue.

Regulations at EU level bring to light just what national governments could do in collaboration with cyber security firms and companies.

It’s a potential partnership that could see governments providing incentives for innovation to conquer the threat of data breaches.

Although Steve Malone of Mimecast opined: “Cyber security experts are better able to analyse new threats and build appropriate defensive technologies, while appreciating the reality of how these tools are deployed within a variety of organisations.”

There is a long way to go, as the British Airways and Ticketmaster incidents prove that there is still a lot to think about, before the date breach issue is solved.

The post Threat-proofing businesses today–should employees be more cautious? appeared first on International Finance.

The consumer credit reporting company said that through an internal research it found 2.4 million additional breaches.

The breached information include customers’ names, addresses and social security numbers.

The company that holds information of more than 820 million consumers and 91 million global businesses, said in a statement: “Equifax will notify these newly identified US consumers directly, and will offer identity-theft protection and credit-file monitoring services at no cost to them.”

The breach cost Equifax more than $114 million last year, even after insurance payouts. But on the positive side, the company’s profits had no negative impact.

To learn more about the affected ones, the company has introduced a website for its customers.

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I believe the benefits of social media for businesses far outweigh the risks. From market research to targeted advertising, social media allows us to build relationships and brand loyalty that translate into more sales.

To prevent those benefits being undermined by cyber threats and other dangers, we simply need a common sense approach to managing risk.

The threat can come from many quarters. A disaffected employee could use social channels to post damaging content while another employee might accidentally post sensitive material. Unhappy customers might place damaging content on your social channels. Meanwhile, criminal groups could be using your streams to identify individuals to target with ‘phishing’ scams or placing malware in social media messaging. Unscrupulous competitors and hackers might be looking to break into your systems through social media, while single interest groups can use social media to commandeer your own social forums and use them to protest against you.

It’s an unnerving idea. The first thing you can do to protect your business is to take stock of the vulnerabilities.

Consider this. It’s reckoned that ten per cent of people will click on anything in a social media stream without considering that it might be a cyber risk. Your business’s social media channels may have insufficient privacy settings in place. That may also be true of key individuals within the business, for example your directors’ personal LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter profiles. I recommend that you keep on top of those privacy settings and fine tune them for your business needs.

One obvious area for attention is that many firms allow uncontrolled usage of social media by employees with little or no monitoring. Employees and directors should be educated about the risks. For example, they should know to think twice before clicking on shortened URLs in social media updates that give no clue where the link will take them. It’s worth noting that social media messaging systems, such as Facebook Messenger or Twitter’s Direct Message, may have less powerful security filters than your email systems so scams that would be detected and go straight to junk or quarantine in email may get through via social media.

Pay attention to passwords. It’s remarkable how few people take the time to protect themselves and their businesses in this way. Simple passwords are easy to hack, so use strong passwords – long chains of special characters, numbers and a mix of upper and lower case letters. Wherever possible, go for two-factor authentication as well.

Some of the scarier security risks for businesses include the posting of inappropriate content that leads to reputational damage or even legal corporate liability. Accounts can be hijacked by hackers, and social mediais a way that identity thieves can swot up on their victims. Once again, common sense goes a long way to protecting individuals and their employers. For example, if you have a top secret security clearance and work at a nuclear weapons facility, you shouldn’t be posting about it on social media.

Perhaps the single most important lesson to learn when it comes to assessing vulnerability is to accept this basic premise – people are fallible – and proceed accordingly.

So what security controls can businesses put in place? I recommend six areas for your attention:

• Control access – make it clear who can use social media at work and especially who has access to your organisation’s social media channels
• Have an ‘acceptable use’ policy so employees know for what purposes they can use social media at work, and what would be unacceptable
• Control publication of content on your social media channels – an important aspect of this is to ensure your marketing team are properly trained to create your social media output and manage your social media channels
• Review privacy settings across your business’s social media profiles and pages
• Train people – ensure everyone is aware of the dangers
• Have good IT hygiene – make sure Windows or other Operating Systems are up to date, install security patches for your OS and third party applications such as Adobe and Java

This all involves a certain amount of work and management time, but it is certainly worth it to ensure you benefit from the advantages of social media without leaving yourself open to risks. Every journey starts with a single step. Begin by doing this one thing: Use strong passwords.

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The new office in the Cork capitol building will staff 50 employees over the next 2 years. This team will include a Sales Director, Office Manager, Training and Pre-Sales Engineer, and Sales Representatives to support the UK, Ireland, Northern Europe, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and the Middle East.

Welcoming the new project, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys TD said, “This decision by Keeper Security to open its first European office in Cork with the creation of 50 new quality jobs, is a very exciting project. The ICT Sector has made extraordinary advances in recent years but these advances bring their own challenges, and password protection and encryption are becoming very significant issues.  Keeper is at the forefront of technologies to combat crime in this area and the Government warmly welcomes investing companies who have expertise in new high-tech niche areas of the ICT sector”.
“I am delighted to be leading the Keeper Security sales team for EMEA,” said John Maher, Director of Sales. “Our focus will be to choose the right people and provide the right environment to significantly grow the business into Europe in 2018.”

“John and the European team will be a vital connection to our customers overseas,” said Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-founder of Keeper Security. “They will be responsible for adding 20 percent to our total revenue and provide support to the many businesses that need password and data protection. More than 80 percent of data breaches are due to weak or poor password management and Keeper Security plans to be the first line of defense to protect thousands of businesses across EMEA over the next several years.”

Martin Shanahan, CEO of IDA Ireland said “Keeper Security adds to the dynamic cluster of cyber security companies choosing to serve their customers in the EMEA market from Ireland.  Cork, in particular, already has an established cluster of online security firms in place. The city’s tech infrastructure, talent pool and supportive academic network have created a compelling business environment which will continue to attract investment from companies operating in this space.”

Passwords represent the greatest security risk to businesses today. With Keeper, employees have on-demand access to encrypted passwords, websites and applications, increasing their productivity while protecting them with best-in-class security. Keeper goes beyond serving as a password management tool and works as a digital vault to store an organization’s most sensitive digital assets.

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Saka Energi sought a solution to increase workforce productivity within a trusted mobile environment, that maintained security from any kind of threat, especially cyberattacks. BlackBerry UEM is enabling the company to increase the convenience of mobile working, maintain security, and reduce its operational burden.

Tumbur Parlindungan, CEO of Saka Energi said, “As part of our digital transformation strategy, we need to mobilize our workforce and drive satisfaction as well as efficiencies in our business, with the peace of mind that we are protecting sensitive business information and keeping our people safe. We chose BlackBerry UEM and PGASCOM because together, they can provide information confidentiality at every level, with the integration support and expertise that truly understands the complexity of our business.”

Alex Manea, BlackBerry’s Chief Security Officer, speaking at Cybersecurity Indonesia in Jakarta this week, says, “The energy sector is one of the largest industries in Indonesia and therefore, among the most targeted by cybercrime. We are excited to partner with PGASCOM, combining our secure solutions with their expertise to help Saka Energi and other companies to deliver on their digital transformation goals. This partnership demonstrates our commitment to helping Indonesian enterprises be ‘BlackBerry Secure’ by providing solutions and local knowledge to protect against cyber-attacks – ultimately creating safer working environments that drive efficiency, productivity and innovation.”

PGASCOM, a leader at providing telecommunications network services, including fiber optics, internet access, business solution and managed services for the Indonesian oil and gas industry, recently joined BlackBerry’s global Enterprise Partner Program as a Gold-level partner. BlackBerry’s Partner Program is designed to help partners navigate the ever-changing mobile business environment through secure mobile business solutions for their people, processes, and data. It helps partners gain new competencies and capabilities that will enable them to meet and exceed market demand, by ensuring partners are well equipped to successfully design, architect, implement, and support BlackBerry solutions.

Sri Budi Mayaningsih (Ibu Maya), President Director of PGASCOM says, “PGASCOM provides the information and technology backbone for many industries in Asia and globally, so we understand the severity of concerns by CIOs with regards to data security and people safety. Cybersecurity threats against the oil and gas industry are a significant and ongoing challenge. As a trusted brand in Indonesia and leader in secure software that delivers a safe operating environment for people and information, we are pleased to partner with BlackBerry to help customers like Saka Energi protect critical infrastructure.”

BlackBerry UEM delivers complete unified endpoint management and policy control for diverse and growing mobile workforces. Part of the BlackBerry Enterprise Mobility Suite, BlackBerry UEM allows you to securely manage devices operating on key platforms (Android for Work, Samsung KNOX, iOS, Windows 10, OS X and BlackBerry 10). It also supports native Mobile Device Management (MDM) controls for managing device policies and Mobile Application Management (MAM) capabilities for deploying approved business apps.

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The joint operations were co-led by units specialised in cybercrime at the offices of the prosecutor generals of Frankfurt am Main and of Dresden, as well as the State Criminal Police of Hesse and Saxony, with the assistance of the German Federal Criminal Police. The operations were carried out in close cooperation with the judicial and law enforcement authorities of France, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada, San Marino and Switzerland.

This international joint operation is the result of the investigations conducted in Germany against criminal networks suspected of managing the internet-based download portals www.usenetrevolution.info, www.town.ag and www.usenet-town.com, which illegally offered licensed or copyrighted materials (such as films, TV shows, software, computer games, music, e-books and e-papers), without paying the required fees to license or copyright owners.

In total, the download portals provided illegal access to approximately 2 million links to licensed or copyrighted materials. The owners of the platforms managed to make an illicit profit of several million euros, and this copyright infringement created damages of approximately EUR 7,5 million.

Through a coordination centre established at its premises in The Hague, Eurojust supported the international joint operations and ensured the transmission and execution of European Investigation Orders, rogatory letters and a European Arrest Warrant, as well as the swift exchange of operational information collected on the ground among all the judicial and law enforcement authorities involved.

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