STICKING your head above the parapet and embarking on a ‘threat hunt’ could be the difference between corporations and governments cutting off potentially crippling cyberattacks and scrambling around for damage limitation after a major security breach.

Cyberattacks are increasing in numbers and severity almost daily around the world and the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) is one of the worst-hit regions. According to a PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PwC) report, 56 percent of companies surveyed in the region said they suffered losses of more than $500,000 annually from cyberattacks, compared with the global average of 33 percent.

With the Information Technology (IT) spending in the region set to reach $155 billion by the end of this year, according to Gartner, and the Middle East’s cybersecurity market set to top $22 billion by 2022, private sector corporations are clearly recognizing the need for action.

The 2018 edition of Gulf Information Security Exhibition and Conference (GISEC) once again set the agenda for the region’s cybersecurity sector. A major focus of this year’s event was the growing desire for the region’s public and private sectors to take the lead with their cybersecurity and embark on ‘threat hunting’ missions.

According to Recorded Future, a US-Swedish company that specializes in cyber threat intelligence at corporate and national levels, ‘threat-hunting’ is catching on in the region because it is a relatively new concept and because companies are increasingly acknowledging the need to take the fight to cybercriminals and hackers.

“Too often threat intelligence in an organization is operational. It’s a case of people searching for a solution to fix a problem they have now. Companies should be sticking your heads about the castle walls and looking at what the potential threats are, who they might be coming and where they are emanating from,” said Chris Pace, Technology Advocate for Recorded Future.

“Activating threat intelligence gives you the ability to make strategic decisions on how best to respond to those threats. Our machines collect from one million data sources globally every day, there’s no borders to the internet, we can make reasonable, transparent judgments on what we might see, be that on the dark web or on the mainstream Internet, in real-time. That may be a specific reference to a company, an industry or a region.

With large scale cyber crimes such as ransomware and malware attacks constantly in the headlines it’s a C-level executives could easily get caught up thinking every threat will affect their business, but by going threat hunting, companies can better identify specific threats or attacks to them and decide how best to act, according to Pace.

“Threat hunting, is where strategic threat intelligence has great power, allowing you to review the intelligence and making a strategic decision on where they might need security to plug potential gaps before they become big gaps,” he said. “In this region, companies are starting to be proactive. They have an open-view about what is good for their security. They can see the benefit of threat intelligence.”

Those views were echoed by Carbon Black, a leading developer of endpoint security software. “Too many companies have been focused on detection and prevention as their cybersecurity strategy and relying on antivirus systems, thinking they are protected. Now they are realizing that they haven’t been protected at all, spending far too much time, money and resources in the process,” said Rick McElroy, security strategist, Carbon Black.

“By implementing proactive threat hunting, companies, even with limited resources can better understand threats and make better decisions based on the data the hunt produces and disrupt an attack on time. Threat hunting makes for better detection and prevention, you can tune your defenses to be faster and automate systems.

“In this region, people are waking up to this and there’s a will for this proactive approach. There still needs to be a lot of education. I would like to see more for students and kids to get into cyber jobs such as threat hunting. But I’m sure we’ll get there.”

Future Technology Week 2018 attracted more than 7,500 cybersecurity, IoT and smart cities experts to network, share knowledge and trade in the latest solutions and services that will transform the way we live and work in the future. —SG