Businesses are finding themselves in the unviable position of having to deal with rampant cyberthreats while they push their Digital Transformation strategies forward and continue to navigate the remote workforce environment . Improving cyber-resilience can be a daunting task especially for organisations that have resource constraints due to the pandemic . Having visibility of technology ecosystems , from the perspective of attackers , is essential . Rami El Malak , CEO and co-founder of spiderSilk , the region ’ s first cybersecurity product company specialising in attack surface management and threat detection , tells Intelligent CIO Africa why organisations of all sizes and cybersecurity maturity need to address this , as well as why the Middle East is a strategic growth region for the company .

Challenges and threats for SMEs

More businesses are digital today than ever before . As a result of that , digital footprints keep increasing , which means that there are significantly more entry points and vulnerabilities for cybercriminals to exploit . It ’ s no surprise then that we hear of new breaches with every

We ’ ve seen a fivefold rise in the number of security incidents and breaches in 2020 and US $ 1 trillion was lost to cybercrime during that same year .

There are other trends that have exacerbated this issue . Cyberattacks used to be sophisticated and in the realm of nation states and cybercrime syndicates . But not anymore . They ’ ve been democratised so pretty much anyone with a couple of hundred dollars ’ worth of tools can cause damage .

And these breaches aren ’ t just occurring due to persistency of intent by malicious actors but , interestingly , many of these data leakages are a result of a simple human error . More than half the data leakages that happened last year were the result of simple misconfigurations or human negligence .

With regulatory frameworks and data privacy laws coming into play , data breaches have also become more costly than ever , with the average breach in the region costing US $ 6 million ( according to IBM ).

Attack surface management

Historically , organisations used to be in a particular line of business and would use IT to support that . With the increase in digitisation and online presence , we ’ re seeing that IT is now at the core of many businesses .

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