Three -fold jump in cyber attacks

Manama : There has been a three-fold increase in hacking attempts on government entities in the Kingdom, according to Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA). The startling data came to light at the second cyber hawks meeting on information security organised by iGA in cooperation with KPMG Fakhro.

Highlighting the hacking attempts on Bahrain’s government systems, the iGA said more than 167,000 hacking attempts were detected in 2016, as compared to 2015, with the information security specialists successfully dealing with more than 107 million malicious emails. 

According to statistics presented at the meeting, protected data in government entities increased by 12.4 per cent in 2016 compared to 2015, reaching 1,046.6TB. 

Data related to government entities also showed that 20pc of the employees shared their passwords with others, 44pc opened the emails received without knowing the source of the sender, while 17pc of them did not take the initiative to inform the IT department about the attacks they received while surfing the internet during working hours. 

Also, 13pc of the government employees transferred work files home using external data memory (USB).

The meeting was chaired by General Director of Information Technology Shaikh Salman bin Mohammed Al Khalifa and attended by specialists in information security field, representing 56 governmental and semi-governmental entities.