UAE's digital trust gap opens a new frontier for cybersecurity
The United Arab Emirates has long prided itself on being one of the world's most digitally ambitious economies. A new study from IDEMIA Secure Transactions (IST), conducted by IPSOS BVA across 11 countries and more than 3,300 respondents, suggests that ambition is now colliding with a cybersecurity exposure rate that far exceeds the global norm, and that collision is reshaping how consumers, regulators and technology vendors alike think about digital trust.
Nearly all UAE respondents (97%) describe themselves as frequent users of digital tools and services, with 79% saying they conduct as much of their lives online or via smartphone as possible. Yet 63% report having already experienced hacking or data theft, against a global average of 38%. More striking still, 32% say those incidents had direct financial consequences, more than double the equivalent global figure.
Regulation steps in where awareness falls short
The timing of the report is not incidental. The UAE's National Cyber Security Strategy covering 2025 to 2031 is now operative, the Central Bank has mandated the elimination of SMS-based one-time passwords for financial transactions, and Federal Decree-Law No. 6 of 2025 has extended regulatory oversight to fintechs, digital wallets, and payment service providers. The legislative stack is, in effect, codifying a market signal that consumers were already sending: security is no longer a feature; it is table stakes.
The IST data bears that out commercially. Some 40% of UAE respondents cite security as their primary criterion when selecting between digital services, ranking it ahead of conventional user-experience considerations. Meanwhile, 86% express interest in using a physical payment card as a strong authentication method for online identity verification, a finding that points to continued demand for hardware-rooted trust anchors even in an otherwise smartphone-first market.
Quantum and AI reshape the threat horizon
The study also captures how emerging technologies are beginning to recalibrate public threat perception beyond conventional phishing and credential theft. Some 61% of UAE respondents view artificial intelligence as making cyberattacks more sophisticated. More notably, among respondents who are already familiar with quantum computing, 83% see it as a potential cybersecurity threat. That figure reflects a degree of quantum literacy that will surprise many in the security industry and suggests that public awareness of post-quantum cryptographic risk is advancing faster than vendor and policy timelines have assumed.
Marc Bertin, CTO at IDEMIA Secure Transactions, framed the wider challenge in terms that cross sectors as readily as they describe a single market: "As digital ecosystems become increasingly connected and emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing reshape the cybersecurity landscape, building trust will become one of the defining challenges of the digital economy."
Cross-sector capital implications
For investors tracking the convergence of fintech regulation, cybersecurity infrastructure and AI-enabled threat vectors, the UAE data points to a structural demand shift rather than a cyclical spike. Gulf sovereign capital has been a consistent allocator into digital infrastructure over the past three years, but the IST findings indicate that the next wave of regional technology spend may be weighted towards trust infrastructure: authentication platforms, tokenisation services, and post-quantum cryptography readiness. The UAE's regulatory posture, moving from voluntary guidance to mandatory implementation on authentication standards, creates a procurement forcing function that is likely to be replicated across the broader GCC as peer nations benchmark their own digital economy strategies.
The report's implicit challenge for vendors is equally pointed. Consumers are not retreating from digital services despite high rates of breach experience; they are demanding that security be woven into the service design rather than bolted on as a compliance layer. That shift in expectation, visible most sharply in one of the world's fastest-growing digital economies, will ultimately travel upstream to product roadmaps, infrastructure procurement decisions and capital allocation across the cybersecurity, fintech and IoT sectors globally.