The yearly cybersecurity report from Trend Micro offers data on how organisations in the country should prepare for future threats.

More than 15 million cyber threats in Qatar have been blocked and detected by Trend Micro, according to the Trend Micro’s annual cybersecurity report for 2021.

The company identified and stopped approximately 7 million URL victim attacks, over 1.6 million malware attacks, and over 4 million email threats.

Furthermore, Smart Home Network (SHN) solutions shielded remote learning and working from 9,694 SHN incoming and outbound threats and stopped 712,525 SHN occurrences.

The Gulf nation has seen a number of cyberattacks over the past three years, most of which began appearing ahead of the blockade but have subsequently become more frequent.

Hundreds of people have also reported online bank theft, impersonation attempts, and extortion, despite the Gulf states’ reconciliation with the former blockading quartet.

Numerous publications say crimes are likely to increase as the FIFA World Cup in Qatar draws near since it might be a golden ticket for spammers and hackers.

Trend Micro noted bad actors are becoming more proficient in their attacks as a result of the continuous migration to the cloud and the rise of hybrid cloud operations.

“Qatar’s organisations have resiliently battled through the pandemic and the accelerated digital transformation, but still face a challenging threat landscape and more sophisticated attacks by bad actors,” said Assad Arabi, Managing Director, Gulf Cluster, Trend Micro.

The yearly cybersecurity report from Trend Micro offers data on how organisations in the country should prepare for future threats and take necessary precautions to safeguard their future digital goals.

Organisations are fighting on all fronts to combat rising cyber dangers as the world moves towards a more digital landscape. Enterprises now have to traverse a more complicated threat landscape as a result of the recent changes, it noted.

“The challenges of safeguarding digital activities with the hybrid work model have also prompted enterprises to reassess their security approach with robust, industry-leading security solutions.”

Anti-Qatar propaganda

Qatar has faced numerous campaigns designed to discredit its reputation on the global stage.

Last year, data analysis obtained by Doha News revealed how hashtags that trended in Qatar involved thousands of dubious accounts and suspected bots designed to disseminate and amplify information critical of the Gulf state.

The data, which examined nearly 100,000 tweets, identified several highly active users that produced thousands of tweets featuring specific hashtags in an unusual period of time, all of which attempt to promote alleged public dissatisfaction towards Qatar’s government.

More recently, an investigation be Eekad, an open-source intelligence platform in the Middle East, tore through layers of fake accounts, mysterious pages as well as general content that appears to target Qatar, in a bid to find the network behind anti-Qatar platform QLeaks.

The four-month long investigation traced the popular online account back to the United Arab Emirates – which had been closely monitored by Eekad since the 2017 crisis.