TRA foiled over 1,000 Net attacks last year

abu dhabi — The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) successfully foiled 1,054 cyber attacks in 2016, the authority has announced.

“The cyber attacks sought to deface and block government websites, including denial of service, hacking, deception, fraud, and identity and document theft,” said Mohammed Al Zarooni, director of TRA’s policy and programmes department.

He noted that private companies were the most vulnerable to such attacks, with 510 targeted at them, followed by 463 against government entities.

The government sector experienced phishing and fraud, web defacement, malicious code, unauthorised access, scans, stolen credentials and others, while the private sector experienced phishing and fraud, malicious code, inappropriate content, and denial of service.

The TRA’s computer emergency readiness team (aeCERT) conducts several workshops under its advisory, education and awareness services. These workshops emphasise its role in spreading information security awareness across the corporate level and the role of the employees in protecting their organisation. The workshops under the information security awareness campaign cover a wide range of topics, including social media, social engineering, email security and computer protection.

As a cyber security coordination centre, aeCERT aims to improve the UAE’s overall cyber security condition by coordinating the sharing of cyber information and coping with the cyber risks faced by the country. — Wam