Some 53 per cent of employees in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) have expressed fears over spying drones in the region.This was revealed by the Business Digitisation survey, conducted in the region, by cybersecurity and digital privacy company, Kaspersky earlier this year.

The research revealed that corporate spies and hackers use drones to get trade secrets, confidential information, and other sensitive data from corporations and data centers.

Kaspersky explained that a drone can carry a device for hacking into corporate networks – for instance, a smartphone, a compact computer (e.g., Raspberry Pi), or a signal interceptor (e.g., Wi-Fi Pineapple [1]), and hackers use these devices to access corporate data and disrupt communications. It stressed that all wireless communication (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID, etc.) is vulnerable to drone attacks.

According to the cybersecurity firm, drones bring cyberespionage to a new level as they can access data channels that a traditional off-site hacker could not obtain. It said most often, survey respondents in the spheres of IT, manufacturing, and energy mentioned drone spy threat concerns.

Kaspersky said overall, 70 per cent of employees in the META region said their company would benefit from installing drone detection systems to protect the business from spying.

A counter drone technology is a system used to detect, classify, and mitigate drones. These systems employ a wide combination of sensors, including radars, radio frequency analysers, cameras, lidars, jammers and other sensors, to track, analyse drone activity.

The survey disclosed that overall, 77 per cent of employees in the META region fear cyberespionage within their industry. The most frequent concerns about espionage are that it could lead to organisations losing money (mentioned by 42 per cent of respondents) and intellectual property (24 per cent), as well as harming business reputation (16 per cent).

Kaspersky said threat intelligence plays a crucial role in countering cyberespionage by providing actionable insights and proactive measures: continuously monitoring corporate IT systems for signs of espionage-related activities such as reconnaissance and data exfiltration and identifying threat actors. It said threat intelligence provides IP addresses, malware signatures, and patterns of behaviour which enable cybersecurity teams to detect and block espionage-related attacks in real-time.

Head of Technical Experts at Kaspersky, Emad Haffar, said: “Our research showed that most business representatives understand the dangers of cyberespionage. Getting information on the tactics, techniques and procedures used by cyber spies helps organisations adapt their defenses and develop countermeasures to thwart these tactics effectively,”

He added: “Cyberespionage is typically carried out by the means of phishing, malware, exploits, and targeted attacks, but today we also need to take the threat of drone spying into account. At Kaspersky, we provide organisations with solutions to counter both ‘traditional’ means of cyber spying and new ones, like spying from drones. Kaspersky Threat Intelligence helps organisations increase the awareness and knowledge of high-profile cyberespionage campaigns with comprehensive and practical reporting. And Kaspersky Anti Drone detects, classifies and mitigates unwanted objects in the air, getting all the information on the drone in one single web interface. The solution allows us to monitor the airspace.”