Oman thwarts 14 billion cyberattacks in 2019

MUSCAT: Oman’s cyber defences foiled a staggering 14 billion cyberattacks over the course of last year, the Ministry of Technology and Communications (MTC) announced in its 2019 annual report.

“The ministry always supports the security of government entities by providing network protection, information systems security, responding to cyberattacks, and threats related to government information security and generally providing security to the cyberspace in Oman,” it said in a statement.

In addition to uncovering and tackling 332 cyber security incidents in 2019, Oman thwarted 14.111 billion malicious attempts against government networks.

In coordination with other government entities, the Ministry also discovered 41735 vulnerabilities, analysed and inspected 13,896

IP addresses, offered 91 security consulting services, completed 135 security assessments and integrated 29 government web portals into the portal protection service, it said.

In 2019, Oman National CERT discovered and handled 483,794 real attempted service attacks, (152,480 web attacks, 152 malware attacks, 89,505 mobile attack and 2,099,498 phishing attacks).

The National Digital Forensic Lab handled 162 digital forensics cases with 813 evidence devices including computers, mobile, phones, external hard disk and USBS resulted from cyber-crime cases in Oman.

Oman National CERT also completed the national drill for cybersecurity with the participation of 73 government entities and infrastructure and critical sectors of banking, utilities, transport and logistics, and oil & gas sector.