Report: The UAE is the sixth most popular target for the world’s hackers

The UAE is the sixth most targeted country in the world by hackers, Microsoft says in a new report timed to the start of Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October.

The findings reflect the intense concentration of financial, energy, manufacturing, and retail firms in the tiny nation — all juicy hacking targets. They also reflect how the hacking landscape has been supercharged by AI in recent years.

Caveat: There’s no reason to doubt the findings — Microsoft products are used across the planet, which means the company has greater visibility into who’s getting hacked and where than all but a few other organizations. But the company is also a big player in the region and recently said it plans to deploy its AI-empowered cyber defense tool MDASH across UAE government customers, a fact the company and state media touted in a press release for the report.

Another recent Microsoft report found that UAE residents are the biggest AI superusers on the planet. Just over 73% of the UAE’s working-age population were users of generative AI in 2Q 2026, up a bit more than three percentage points from the prior quarter.