The UAE’s Ministry of Community Development (MOCD) has teamed up with Microsoft to better secure its digital assets and protect against cyber-attacks.
As part of the agreement, the ministry will adopt Microsoft’s Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) to protect its digital perimeter and respond to endpoint attacks, advanced threats, fileless attacks and zero-day exploits.
“As we work to improve social development in the UAE, and pursue the national agenda for Vision 2021, our responsibility to strengthen family coherence and consolidate the position of our nation as a place of happiness will rely more and more on a stable technology environment,” said Saeed Abdulla, Information Technology Advisor – Minister’s Office, UAE Ministry of Community Development.
“To protect, detect and respond to sophisticated and advanced threats, we partnered with Microsoft to implements its security and compliance solutions. Our partnership will ensure seamless fulfilment of the vision our wise leaders have for our citizens and our country.”
Considering how the threats landscape is evolving every day, third-party anti-virus solutions was insufficient to guard against sophisticated, fileless and zero-day threats, MOCD opted to standardise its cybersecurity strategy using Microsoft Defender ATP, leading to a simplification of operations and a more coherent defence of its digital estate.
“Microsoft believes a new security approach is needed for today’s digital era,” said Sayed Hashish, general manager, Microsoft UAE. “We must prioritise trust at the core of our technology, so we can empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. We use our unique insights into the threat landscape and collaboration with our partner ecosystem to build a safer world for our customers. We are proud to partner with the Ministry of Community Development, against cyber-attackers, and bolster the ministry’s perimeter against a daily siege. That way, its innovators can concentrate on improving people’s lives while being amply protected against those with a more sinister outlook.”
To address this dire need for trusted, secure and intelligent cloud services, Microsoft announced two data centres in the UAE which will cater to governments and businesses by providing them enterprise-grade reliability and security, combined with data residency and the broadest compliance.
Microsoft invests more than $1 billion each year in cybersecurity R&D. The company sees around 30 million attempts to access Microsoft accounts by unauthorised parties daily. It analyses 6.5 trillion signals each day for potential malicious activity. Microsoft Defender ATP also fends off 160 million potential threats in a day (that is 5 billion every month). In 2018 alone, Microsoft blocked more than 5 billion phishing attempts. In addition, the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph contains insights from more than 200 global cloud and commercial services.
