Ambitious technology goals and the push for rapid digitisation in the Middle East could increase the impact of cyber attacks, a new survey indicates.
Attacks are becoming more prevalent due to artificial intelligence, according to the report from Optro, a software company that focuses on AI solutions to issues of governance, risk and compliance.
“One in four UAE respondents in our research said they'd experienced a significant business disruption due to an AI-enabled cyber attack or ransomware in the last two years,” said Richard Chambers, a senior adviser at Optro.
The poll, conducted by Panterra Group, was based on responses from 506 individuals from the UAE, US, UK, Canada and Germany. Those surveyed worked in the fields of audit risk, compliance, business continuity management, information security and information technology.
Experts have long warned that AI might lower the threshold for cyber attacks, making it easier for nefarious actors to damage digital infrastructure, but Optro's survey gave nuance to those warnings.
“AI, like any tool, can cut both ways,” said Mr Chambers, who said that several countries, especially the UAE, were starting to use AI in expediting the process of responding to cyber attacks.
“The same capabilities that make AI powerful for attackers are increasingly available to defenders.”
Mr Chambers explained that Optro's findings showed a chasm between a business's confidence in preventing an attack and actual responses.
“For UAE organisations that experienced a significant disruption during the past 12 months, 62 per cent failed to recover within their established recovery time objectives with more than a third exceeding their recovery targets by more than twice the planned time frame,” Mr Chambers said.
“And yet, confidence remains remarkably high with nearly three-quarters of respondents reporting confidence in their ability to meet recovery objectives during a major disruption.”
Optro's report said that “geopolitical tensions” and the Middle East's “reliance on expatriate workforces” presented unique challenges.
The head of the UAE's Cyber Security Council, Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, last year said that AI could become crucial in fending off cyber attacks.
“Early warning systems will allow us to actually detect attacks before they happen, that's where I have great hope in AI,” he said during remarks at Washington's Billington Cybersecurity Summit in September.
The survey showed those in the US expressed the highest concern about AI quickening the pace of cyber attacks.
Meanwhile, those polled in the UAE were most concerned about “autonomous AI creating new failure points”, meaning cyber criminals might take advantage of various implementations of AI that don't necessarily have humans in the loop, making exploitation easier.
Optro's analysis found that digital disruptions often stem from vulnerabilities in third-party tools used by businesses and organisations.
“If you're not actively assessing and managing the BCM posture of your critical vendors, you're carrying risk,” Mr Chambers said. Efforts to blunt the impact of disruption threats require much more than just lip service, he added.
“They require deliberate investment and ongoing attention, that's what separates the organisations that recover quickly from those that don't,” he said.
