UAE: data loss prevention and data privacy are top priorities

There is a great potential for security industry within this region as MEA countries represented a total security solutions market potential of nearly USD 1.89 billion in 2015, expected to increase at a CAGR of 9.3% to a total of USD 2.94billion in 2020 as per the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Security Spending Guide, H12016.

The biggest complexity factor found in the study was configuration and management. In MEA, only 33% of the organizations have a single-vendor strategy with majority of them highlighted their multiple-vendor security environments, with some companies in UAE and KSA indicating in excess of nine vendors — indicative of the level of complexity within their environment.

In addition organizations in MEA indicated having around 1–6 products, while a few were in excess of 13. This variance between the number of vendors and products deployed is indicative of a lack of an integrated view.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) was ranked as the top information security priority in UAE and Saudi Arabia with Data Privacy Issues also being highlighted as a priority in UAE and cloud security and access management as priorities in Saudi Arabia. However, malware detection and prevention solutions were surprisingly low in the UAE.

When referring to the size of organizations, DLP was a top priority for both SMBs and enterprises while security governance and management, business continuity, and, attack and penetration testing are higher priorities for larger organizations in the region.