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Cyber Security- The Sword and the Shield Part 2
In part 1 of our blog on cyber security, Ryan discussed the “Sword”, which included hackers, viruses and vulnerabilities, he will now delve into part 2, the “Shield” outlining antivirus, the professionals, frameworks and practices as well as current hiring trends in the Middle East.The Shield
As cyberattacks continue to grow in intensity and frequency, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come to the forefront as being one of the most important solutions. AI is able to analyse large amounts of data, specifically risk data in this case and subsequently provide threat intelligence that is used by cyber security professionals to shorten the response time for threats.
According to a market report conducted in 2019 artificial intelligence in the cyber security market is projected to grow from USD 8.8 billion in 2019 to USD 38.2 billion by 2026. With AI becoming more prolific across many sectors, this technology has brought enormous changes in cybersecurity. AI is critical in building automated security systems, facial recognition (a huge element of biometric security) and automatic threat detection. This makes it a critical tool for the future of cyber security despite its use in attacks to bypass the latest security protocols and the spread of smart malware. AI based threat detection systems can predict new attacks instantly which enables security teams to respond to data breaches in real time.
Another trend that I’ve been running into more over the last few years is Extended Detection and Response (or XDR as it’s known). With the escalating amount of data breaches within organisations, the security teams are hard pressed to gain visibility of complete organisation and client data across the large amounts of endpoints (devices that can access the network) that now exist in the digital landscape (emails, networks, servers, cloud, applications, etc.) XDR is becoming more widely used due to the benefits of being able to automatically collect data from multiple endpoints and cross reference them for better incident response time and faster threat detection.
New technologies means that we need new people to utilise them!
Have you hugged your CISO today? (cyber jokes). According to Cybercrime Magazine, the cybersecurity talent crunch is expected to create 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021, which is up by 350% from the 1 million positions in 2014. There is a severe lack of cyber security professionals to combat the current escalating rise of cyber attacks. The World Economic Forum (WEF) published an article from the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which observed that “nowhere is the workforce-skills gap more pronounced than in cybersecurity.” A Forbes Technology Council post also stated that the number would be in the top 100 for the size of work populations of countries worldwide.
Currently, there has been a significant increase in cyber security jobs in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia leading the way as the country with the largest hiring requirements at the moment for cyber security professionals with the UAE coming in close second. Cloud security seems to be at the forefront of these needs making up almost 60% of my own personal portfolio of client requirements with enterprise risk, data privacy protection and identity access management being quite prominent also. This need will only continue to grow in the coming years as the requirement for a mature and sturdy cyber security practice within every organisation becomes not a luxury but a necessity.
Thank you for reading and if you require my recruitment expertise or would like to send your feedback on the blog please contact me at rmcdougall@cooperfitch.ae