The UAE faces more than 200,000 cyberattacks every day, with three emirates – Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah – facing nearly 60 percent of these attacks.
While giving a presentation at the Gitex Global 2025 on Thursday, data by Dr. Mohammed Al Kuwaiti, head of cybersecurity for the UAE government, showed that Dubai sees the highest number of attacks at 21 percent, followed by Abu Dhabi (19 percent), Sharjah (18 percent), Ras Al Khaimah (12 percent), Fujairah (15 percent), Ajman (9 percent), and Umm Al Quwain (6 percent).
More than one-third – 34.9 percent – of these cyberattacks are targeted at government entities, 21.3 percent at financial firms, 14 percent at energy entities, 11.6 percent at insurance companies, 6.7 percent at healthcare enterprises, and 4.8 percent at IT services among others.
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Importantly, the UAE successfully repels these cyberattacks targeting different public and private sector entities.
Data showed that the average attack duration targeted at the UAE is much less than the global average. According to the UAE Cybersecurity Council, the average cyberattack duration is 18.53 minutes compared to 60 minutes globally.
But the average cost of a data breach in the Middle East was much higher than the global average in 2024. In the region, it is around $7.92 million as against $4.88 million globally.
“Cyber threats are evolving faster than the world’s enterprises and entities can adapt their defenses,” Al Kuwaiti said, adding that a private healthcare facility was targeted by a dangerous ransomware attack, resulting in approximately 8 terabytes of data exfiltrated.
“Technology will always continue to evolve with us. With those new technologies, there is a new vulnerability,” he said, noting that cyber threats will impact the economy, national security, and society. “We always send this message of having a cyber culture across society. Our goal is to anticipate, to predict, and to really plan to counter those attacks,” he said while speaking on the topic of “Cyber Resilience 2030: People, Policy & AI at the Core of National Security.
Global losses from cyberattacks totaled $10.5 trillion in 2024 and are expected to rise to $15.6 trillion by 2029.
The UAE cybersecurity chief added that a cyber drill was conducted with 133-plus countries to enhance global partnership.
“We are building that deterrence and collaboration in many of those aspects. Cyber culture is an important aspect of our lives; we need to really have this as an integral part of our DNA,” he said.
