Low IT Security Spend leaves Middle East Businesses Open to Cyber Attacks

Mobilk - Globally, businesses and government entities are investing heavily on IT security, but worryingly, Middle East businesses are spending less than 1% of their overall IT budgets on security.

Last year, hackers stole roughly 81.5 million records while carrying out more than 740 confirmed data breaches. Many of the attacks targeted household name brands, costing the global economy up to $575 billion, and destroying consumer confidence, all the while companies still believed their data was secure. 

Fluke Networks is concerned that the IT leaders in the region are allocating budgets to only meet current compliance requirements, leaving businesses vulnerable to attacks. 

Another concern is the increased use of mobile devices in organizations. It is no surprise that these devices are increasingly being brought into the workplace, and used to perform both business critical functions as well as private user tasks. 

In fact, the average corporate user has anywhere from 2-4 mobile devices, most of which require wireless connectivity. Gartner predicts that by 2017, there will be 1.3 billion new business mobile devices.

 In this rapidly changing model, end users are demanding access to applications, development platforms, and network infrastructure as a service over the Internet. But with this transformation into a borderless enterprise, IT departments are finding it difficult to ensure heightened end-user experience, and business effectiveness of its workforce. 

“There’s a significant urgency in the borderless enterprise model, where IT departments don’t always control the entire delivery path, but are expected to fix if something goes wrong. Therefore, it’s important that IT and the business work together to establish a process and methodology that orchestrates the adoption of SaaS applications into the enterprise,” commented Werner Heeren, Regional Director, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, Fluke Networks.

 

 

Also, Fluke Network is seeing increased tension between business and IT. Businesses are often dissatisfied with IT implementation and execution time lines, and 71% of C-level executives believe they can make better IT decisions faster and more cost effectively.

Increasingly businesses are implementing applications and services without any involvement of their IT department, thus leaving themselves vulnerable to attack. As much as 38 % of businesses owners are making half of the enterprises cloud purchase decisions (RightScale 2015)

Furthermore, non-IT departments control more than 37% of enterprise technology spending, and that number is likely to grow over the next few years. (Frost & Sullivan 2015 “Why Choice and Control are Critical to a Successful Cloud Strategy“) 

And if this is not generating enough tension, mobile business users expect their business service anywhere, anytime, and 77% of employees see mobile devices as very important to meeting business objectives.

Fluke Networks are a leading provider of network test and monitoring solutions that speed the deployment and improve the performance of networks and applications. However, it is a matter of concern, that regional businesses do not have adequate protecting for their networks to ensure business proficiency, ahead of GISEC 2015.

At GISEC 2015, Fluke Networks will be showcasing its latest products, including the company’s wireless network security and performance monitoring portfolio. 

GISEC is taking place at Dubai International Conference and Exhibition Centre (DICEC) from 26-28 April 2015, and Fluke Networks can be found at GP 2 & 3