Middle East and Africa: Insurance and financial sector most targeted by cyber attacks
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | May 2023
The insurance and financial segment in the Middle East and Africa was the industry most targeted by cyber attacks in 2022, according to the IBM Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2023 report.
The insurance and financial sector accounted for 44% of incidents in 2022, down slightly from 2021 at 48%. Professional, business and consumer services accounted for 22% of attacks, with manufacturing and energy tying for third place at 11%.
For the purpose of reporting, IBM considered the Middle East and Africa to include the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Iran and Iraq, and the entire African continent.
The most common attack in the region was the deployment of backdoors, in 27% of cases. Ransomware and worms tied for the second-most common attack type at 18% each. Extortion and financial loss each accounted for half of the identified impacts in incidents across the region in 2021. Spear phishing links were used for initial access in two-thirds of cases, and removable media accounted for the other third of the incidents that it remediated in the Middle East and Africa.
Geographical trends
Globally, the Middle East and Africa accounted for 4% of cyber attacks observed by X-Force, which was down from 14% in 2021. Asia Pacific was the most-attacked region in 2022, at 31%; followed by Europe (28%), North America (25%), Latin America (12%) and Middle East and Africa.
Saudi Arabia comprised two-thirds of the cases in the region to which it responded. The remaining cases were split between Qatar, the UAE and South Africa.
The index detected trends and patterns of current and new attacks by collecting and analysing billions of data from network and end devices, examining security incident response processes and many other sources. M