{"id":229680,"date":"2026-06-10T23:38:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T03:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/gulf-states-urged-to-deepen-cyber-ties-as-ransomware-risks-grow\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T00:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T04:00:11","slug":"gulf-states-urged-to-deepen-cyber-ties-as-ransomware-risks-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/10\/gulf-states-urged-to-deepen-cyber-ties-as-ransomware-risks-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulf states urged to deepen cyber ties as ransomware risks grow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gulf states urged to deepen cyber ties as ransomware risks grow<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.agbi.com\/analysis\/cybersecurity\/2026\/06\/gulf-states-urged-to-deepen-cyber-ties-as-ransomware-risks-grow\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-10 23:38:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.agbi.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
\nGCC urged to copy EU model <\/p>\n

Gulf must ensure \u2018operational resilience\u2019<\/p>\n

AI both a threat and a strength<\/p>\n

Gulf states should forge deeper cyber ties as AI and ransomware create new vulnerabilities for critical national infrastructure, a cybersecurity expert has said.<\/p>\n

Despite billions being invested in digital transformation, the GCC is exposed to many of the same threats facing Europe and North America, said Professor Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity specialist at the UK\u2019s University of Surrey.<\/p>\n

The EU has spent decades building systems for sharing intelligence and coordinating responses to cyber incidents through bodies such as the bloc\u2019s law enforcement agency Europol and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne European country gets attacked, shares that intelligence quickly and others can put protections in place before they become victims themselves,\u201d Woodward told AGBI.<\/p>\n

While Gulf states cooperate on cybersecurity through regional forums, including the GCC Ministerial Committee for Cybersecurity, \u201cwhat Europe has done as a collective is form a centre of expertise,\u201d he said. \u201cYou get a force multiplier. You get strength in numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel Valle, CEO of tech services company SCC Middle East, which this month opened its first regional headquarters in the UAE, said digital infrastructure was \u201cboth a strategic asset and a point of vulnerability\u201d.<\/p>\n

Daniel Valle, CEO of SCC Middle East<\/p>\n

\u201cThe region\u2019s advantage will come not only from the pace of technology adoption, but from the quality of deployment and operational resilience behind it,\u201d said Valle, who is speaking at the Data Center Infrastructure and Cloud\u00a0Summit\u00a0this week in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

Woodward said data centres and telecommunications networks are increasingly run by businesses, making information-sharing between governments and operators vital. <\/p>\n

More than 80 percent of successful attacks still begin with phishing emails, stolen credentials or other relatively unsophisticated techniques, he added.<\/p>\n

The warning echoes concerns raised by the UAE Cyber Security Council, which said in April that more than 75 percent of cyberattacks begin with phishing and fraudulent messages.<\/p>\n

AI is making these tactics more effective by producing convincing social-engineering campaigns at scale. Woodward pointed to models such as Claude\u2019s Mythos and the latest OpenAI systems, which can quickly identify software vulnerabilities which once took teams of specialists far longer to uncover.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AI will just carry on doing it when everybody goes home at six o\u2019clock at night,\u201d he said. \u201cThe bad guys will be using it, so you\u2019ve got to keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Alan Woodward, University of Surrey<\/p>\n

Policymakers should consider encouraging mandatory reporting of ransomware incidents, Woodward said, allowing intelligence to be shared faster. <\/p>\n

The UK is moving in that direction through proposals that would ban public bodies from paying ransomware demands, breaking the criminal models underpinning these attacks.<\/p>\n

Focus is increasingly shifting from preventing every breach to limiting the damage when attacks occur. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that it\u2019s becoming near-impossible for organisations to stop every attack at the point of entry,\u201d said Sam Tayan, regional vice president for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at cybersecurity company Illumio.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why we are starting to see a shift in focus from trying to prevent every breach to containing how far an attacker can go once they\u2019re inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nader Henein, research vice president for data protection and AI governance at US advisory firm Gartner, said the Gulf faced fewer constraints from ageing technology systems than many other jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerpetual modernisation allows organisations in the Gulf region to carry very little technical debt and adopt new capabilities without having to scale up teams to deal with legacy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Henein noted that one of the region\u2019s most underestimated cyber risks was a shortage of specialist talent. \u201cEven with AI promising to close the skills gap, adoption will require more skilled cybersecurity professionals who are able to cut through vendor noise and discern actual rather than manufactured risks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cyber lessons learned<\/p>\n

While the recent Iran conflict did not trigger the large-scale cyber campaign some analysts feared, it provided a fresh test of the region\u2019s cyber resilience.<\/p>\n

Data centres and cloud facilities were among the sites targeted during the war. Woodward, who has worked with organisations in the Gulf region, said he was surprised by the absence of a large-scale malware campaign accompanying the kinetic attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would suggest that people are quite well prepared and have learned from experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The region has previously experienced major incidents, including the Shamoon cyberattack on Saudi Aramco in 2012, which was attributed to Iranian-linked hackers and wiped data from about 30,000 computers.<\/p>\n

Arguing that the price of security was \u201ceternal vigilance\u201d, Woodward added: \u201cIt\u2019s not about assuming attacks won\u2019t happen. It\u2019s about making sure you can respond and recover when they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gulf states urged to deepen cyber ties as ransomware risks grow https:\/\/www.agbi.com\/analysis\/cybersecurity\/2026\/06\/gulf-states-urged-to-deepen-cyber-ties-as-ransomware-risks-grow\/ Publish Date: 2026-06-10…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.agbi.com\/tachyon\/sites\/4\/2026\/06\/mms07lgv1k91jsppn-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,30,24,32,25,27],"class_list":["post-229680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-breach","tag-cybersecurity","tag-malware","tag-phishing","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229682,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229680\/revisions\/229682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}