VIEWPOINT
THE WHY AND HOW OF LINUX PATCHING TAREK NAJA, SOLUTION ARCHITECT – MIDDLE EAST, QUALYS, ON HOW TO KEEP YOUR LINUX SYSTEMS SECURE
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ince the region’s governments initiated their economicdiversification initiatives, Middle East enterprises have been digitising at a robust pace, putting them squarely in the crosshairs of cybercriminals. But when COVID-19 struck, and businesses and governments flocked to the cloud for its promise of continuity, things got worse. In the UAE, for example, the nation’s
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CXO INSIGHT ME
SEPTEMBER 2021
top cybersecurity official revealed a 250% increase in attacks from 2019 to 2020. This is what bad actors do. They take advantage of circumstances, any circumstances, to pounce. And what a circumstance the pandemic turned out to be for digital malefactors. To settle quickly into their new homes in the cloud, regional organisations had to accept new, untested ecosystems. Multiple network domains that fell outside the control
of IT, coupled with a mushrooming of Shadow IT, dumped alien environments on the heads of thousands of underresourced tech teams. Among the many bugbears resulting from this technology sprawl was the issue of unpatched vulnerabilities. Their management is a key focus for IT and security professionals tasked with protecting their infrastructures from incursion. In the world of cloud, at a global level, much of this time is taken in
