Over half of businesses operating across multiple locations in the Middle East, Turkiye, and Africa (META) region are facing in the defences of their cybersecurity, a recent study by cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky, has revealed.
The report, titled “Managing geographically distributed businesses: Challenges and solutions,” discovered more than half (54%) of these companies acknowledged a concerning disparity in cybersecurity measures between their headquarters and branch offices.
“However, cybercriminals don’t care which place gets attacked – be it head office or its branches – they can penetrate the company’s infrastructure from any location. Therefore, it’s important to enable protection that is equally effective at all sites.”
Geographically distributed businesses, also known as multi-site businesses, operate in multiple locations across different regions. While they offer significant benefits such as expansion and exposure to additional markets, these businesses face unique challenges in maintaining consistent cybersecurity practices due to factors like varying IT support, budget, and geographical dispersion of staff expertise.
This disparity thus translates to a significant vulnerability. According to the report, only 46% of respondents in the META region expressed confidence that their branch offices enjoyed the same level of cyber protection as their headquarters. While 38% acknowledged the gap but “didn’t think it was critical,” another 16% admitted their branches required a much more robust cybersecurity posture. This shows that a strong cybersecurity posture is no longer a luxury but a critical business necessity.
Kaspersky explains the reasons behind this uneven protection, “In addition to budgetary constraints, one of the reasons for such a disparity lies in the lack of trust with the local expertise. In 44% of cases in the META region, head offices took responsibility for all cybersecurity activities in the branches, stating that local staff didn’t have sufficient knowledge and qualifications. Even in 55% of instances when cybersecurity tasks were shared equally between HQ and local teams, all the activities were supervised by head office.”
“Although the most sensitive data may be held centrally, access to the company’s assets is clearly required from several locations, and when they are not as well protected as head office, it creates security risks for the whole organisation,” Anton Solovey, Senior Product Manager at Kaspersky says.
“Perhaps,” Soloveney noted, “there is a misconception that a lower level of protection will suffice for sites that play a secondary role in the company’s structure.”
“However, cybercriminals don’t care which place gets attacked – be it head office or its branches – they can penetrate the company’s infrastructure from any location. Therefore, it’s important to enable protection that is equally effective at all sites.”
To mitigate this, Kaspersky recommends employing centralised and automated security solutions like Kaspersky Next XDR Expert. ”By aggregating and correlating data from multiple sources in one place and leveraging machine learning technologies, this solution provides effective threat detection and rapid automated response,” said Kasperky.
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