4 of 5 Gulf enterprises rely solely on usernames and passwords
More than four out of five large enterprises in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) region currently rely solely on username and passwords for corporate network authentication, according to Microsoft’s “Digital Transformation Survey.”
The GCC consists of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. Close to 11 percent of enterprises in these countries use 2FA SMS notification with usernames and passwords, seven percent use fingerprint scanning, and slightly less than 1 percent use facial recognition. Small and medium enterprises in the region are slightly more likely to use facial recognition (1.08 percent) than are large enterprises (0.74 percent), according to the survey results.
“The findings clearly show that many of the region’s enterprises have a long way to go to create secure environments for their customers, employees and their intellectual property,” said Mohammed Arif, Regional Director of Modern Workplace and Security for Microsoft Gulf. “Traditional security models have focused on layered perimeter defence and building ‘better walls.’ Today, organizations need to have an always-on and multifaceted approach to security that constantly protects all endpoints, detects the early signs of a breach, and responds before that threat can cause damage. Modern cloud-based automated tools, including analytics based on machine learning and artificial intelligence, can help expedite response.”
Enterprises in the region also lag in other areas of digital security, reporting significant amounts of spam and other malicious emails, and 61 percent if those surveyed say they do not have a data classification solution in place to separate files by degree of data sensitivity.
Suprema set up a new operation in the Dubai Airport Free Zone earlier this year to capitalize on the region’s demand for new digital technologies.
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