VIEWPOINT
CUTTING THROUGH CHAOS HADI JAAFARAWI, MANAGING DIRECTOR – MIDDLE EAST, QUALYS, WRITES CONTEXT XDR IS THE BEST RESPONSE YET TO THE MODERN THREAT LANDSCAPE
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egional cybersecurity chiefs have their hands full — they are understaffed and they face skills gaps. These are challenges that threat actors don’t face. And the increase in IT complexity, combined with many employees working from home on private networks with personal devices, means it has become a steep challenge to keep sensitive apps and data safe. The Middle East and Africa cybersecurity market hit US$ 1.9 billion in 2020, and is projected to reach US$ 2.9 billion by 2026. The spending surge can be attributed to a staggering increase in cyber
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CXO INSIGHT ME
MAY 2022
incidents, brought about by the stayat-home work trends that emerged from the pandemic. In late 2020, in the United Arab Emirates, the nation’s cybersecurity chief described a 250% year-on-year increase in attacks as a “cyber pandemic”. Something must be done, and one of the most popular approaches to the much-desired, catch-all cybersecurity platform in the industry today is extended detection and response (XDR), a cloud-native solution capable of peering into every crevice in the technology stack, to detect and respond to incidents in real time.
Interpretations of the form But as with many products in many industries, not all XDR is created equal. There are many interpretations of the form. Here, I will argue that only context-driven XDR can adequately support security analysts in their prioritisation of threats and the reduction of alert fatigue. Because of the regional skills gap in digital security, teams need all the advantages they can get when it comes to identifying and mitigating threats. However, too often the alerts that prompt the hunt offer very little supporting information about the users, assets, and behaviors that