The UAE's head of cyber security on Wednesday said that the majority of digital threats against the country are state sponsored, but that they are being countered with “high efficiency”.
Mohamed Al Kuwaiti said there are between 90,000 to 200,000 breach attempts focused on the UAE “every single day”.
He told UAE state news agency Wam that many of the attacks launched by 21 active persistent threats and 60 hacktivist groups targeting UAE digital infrastructure originate in Asia, Europe and South Africa. He added that 71.4 per cent of attacks are state sponsored.
Government administration, financial services and banking sectors in the UAE were the main focus of many of those cyber crime attempts, Mr Al Kuwaiti said. Asia accounts for about 66.7 per cent of state-sponsored actor origins and Europe 14.3 per cent, while Middle East or cross-regional actors make up the remainder, Wam reported.
The UAE’s head of cyber security also addressed the increased use of deepfake technology and the proliferation of disinformation by nefarious actors to “erode public trust” and harm the country’s reputation.
“Regional geopolitical tensions across North Africa, the Gulf and broader Middle East information spaces have intensified online narratives targeting the UAE,” he said. “Conflict-driven discourse, diplomatic friction, and AI-enabled disinformation activity have increased rumour propagation and hacktivist mobilisation across regional digital ecosystems.”
His comments follow warnings in recent years from technology and cybersecurity experts who have pointed out that previously obscure AI tools and apps that are now readily available make it easier for groups and individual actors to wage disinformation campaigns.
In an interview with The National last year, Mr Al Kuwaiti highlighted the UAE's efforts over the last decade at making cyber security a major priority. “Our main focus is cyber crime, cyber terrorism and cyber warfare,” he said, adding that the UAE is also seeking to eventually become an “exporter of cyber security talent”.
During a visit to Washington for a conference in September, Mr Al Kuwaiti said the UAE was also prioritising partnerships with cyber security and technology firms as a way to keep the country's digital infrastructure secure.
“An alert [of a cyber attack] came to us from a partner, not even from a government,” he said, recalling a “zero-day attack” in 2025 that was stopped before any damage could be done.
In November, the UAE approved a national encryption policy that has been hailed as a robust plan to make the country a quantum-safe economy.
“It's part of a really small group of countries that are treating this in a proactive way, and that's so critical right now,” said Mohammed Aboul-Magd, vice president of product at SandboxAQ's cybersecurity group.
