Microsoft has identified the UAE as the sixth most targeted country for cyber attacks globally, placing it among a list of 12 nations facing the heaviest volume of threat activity. The ranking puts the United States first, followed by Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and the UK, with the UAE in sixth place ahead of India, Japan, Canada, Germany, Australia and the Philippines.
The tech giant also singled out the UAE as the third most targeted country by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), behind only the US and Israel. According to Microsoft, Iranian state-aligned actors continue to rely primarily on exploiting known vulnerabilities, weak authentication systems and internet-exposed infrastructure to gain initial access to targeted networks, rather than developing novel attack methods.
Yazan Khasawneh, Microsoft UAE's cybersecurity director, said the country is entering a phase in which artificial intelligence is becoming embedded in the operating model of both government and business — a shift he described as bringing new opportunities alongside new categories of risk that security teams must prepare for.
To address the growing threat, Microsoft, the UAE Cyber Security Council and Core42 are preparing to roll out an AI-powered cybersecurity capability called MDASH across government entities in the country, aimed at strengthening detection and response times against increasingly sophisticated intrusion attempts.
The findings land against a backdrop of continuing regional tension, particularly between Iran and Israel, with security analysts cautioning that digital infrastructure across the Gulf, including in the UAE, needs to be hardened further as state-aligned hacking groups intensify their focus on the region's government and business networks.