UAE sees 862% surge in cyberattacks in 5 years as nation rises as global tech hub
KHALED AL KHAWALDEH (DUBAI)Cyberattacks in the UAE have skyrocketed by an alarming 862.45% over the past five years, according to the newly released State of the Market Report 2025 from cybersecurity company Help AG, part of e& (Etisalat). The spike in attacks comes as the UAE rises as a global financial centre and an emerging technology hub, which experts at GISEC on Tuesday said made it increasingly desirable to hackers and bad actors from around the world. 'The UAE is a business hub for the Middle East, which means that automatically, there will also be a lot of attacks,' Help AG's Chief Technology Officer, Nicolai Solling, told Aletihad on Tuesday. The report, launched at GISEC Global in Dubai, highlighted 373,429 "distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)" attacks in 2024 alone, up from just 38,797 in 2019 — underscoring a dramatic escalation in both the volume and sophistication of cyber threats. DDos attacks refer to a type of cyberattack that is used to overwhelm applications and online platforms. Solling said these attacks were becoming more sophisticated as AI and bot technology advanced. The report identified AI-driven attacks, data breaches, and emerging quantum risks as the core cybersecurity frontiers for 2025. Although phishing scams remained the primary threat in the region, initiating 90% of cyber incidents, while credential-based breaches were involved in 45% of cases.
Government Support Nevertheless, Solling said the UAE was well placed to fight the incoming cyberattacks, with the government leading initiatives to ensure the country, its population and its infrastructure were equipped to tackle threats. 'The UAE Government is focusing a lot on making sure that we have a secure environment. Because if you look at what the UAE is doing, they're trying to create a society which is powered by digital transformation and the electronic services that we have as citizens,' he said. 'They also want to attract business. And one of the things that's important for that is to deliver an environment where we can continuously operate even on this kind of things.'
Region-wide IssueA separate report, released by cloud computing company Cloudflare, found that the region was also finding itself increasingly at the centre of attacks — with 52% of surveyed organisations experiencing at least 10 cybersecurity incidents in the last 10 months. Speaking to the crowd at GISEC, Cloudflare CTO Christian Reilly said the region's burgeoning AI and tech industry would only increase its susceptibility to attacks. 'The Middle East is becoming a very attractive place for the bad actors,' he said. This was echoed by Aarti Borkar, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Security, who warned that vulnerabilities — particularly with the amount of data sharing now occurring with AI — were getting worse. She said it would be crucial for companies to come up with new strategies to ensure they were cyber-ready in the AI age. 'Most people turn red when you ask them a question, because they don't want to admit there is a problem,' she said.
'The good news is that the solutions are there, just go out and get them.'
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