Iranian-linked cyberattacks surged sharply across the Middle East last month, with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) incidents rising eightfold during the month, according to cybersecurity firm StormWall.

The data reflects a significant escalation in cyber activity following heightened geopolitical tensions from 28 February, when a joint US-Israeli military operation targeting Iran triggered a wider regional response.

StormWall said that between March 1 and March 20, the number of DDoS attacks recorded across its regional clients increased 8x compared to the same period in February, marking one of the sharpest spikes on record.

“The volume of DDoS traffic currently hitting the Middle East is unlike anything we’ve seen before — even during past periods of geopolitical tension,” said Ramil Khantimirov, the CEO and co-founder of StormWall.

“This is a highly organised, targeted, and growing campaign that will likely continue to escalate.”

UAE among key targets

The attacks were concentrated across a handful of countries, with:

• Israel accounting for 36 per cent of incidents
• The UAE at 21 per cent
• Bahrain at 14 per cent

StormWall said the campaign initially focused on Israeli government and telecom infrastructure, before expanding to other Gulf states.

The most affected sectors included public sector entities, banking and telecommunications: industries seen as both operationally critical and symbolically important.

“If you have digital infrastructure in the region that isn’t properly protected, now is the time to act,” Khantimirov said.

“Over the coming months, we’re likely to see more attacks — and more powerful ones.”

Broader cyber risks emerging

Separate analysis from predictive cyber threat intelligence platform CloudSEK suggests the cyber threat may extend beyond short-term disruption.

The firm said in a new report this month that it too has seen an uptick in Iranian-linked cyber attacks.

CloudSEK is therefore urging organisations, especially those operating in the GCC and Middle East — and adjacent sectors supporting regional infrastructure — to take immediate defensive steps, including:

• Patching exposed internet-facing systems linked to known exploited vulnerabilities
• Auditing exchange, VPN, and web-facing infrastructure for compromise
• Hunting for webshells, suspicious tunneling tools, and malware indicators
• Rotating privileged credentials and auditing administrative access
• Reviewing aviation, energy, telecom, logistics, and industrial environments for abnormal activity
• Blocking known indicators of compromise and validating detection coverage against the malware families referenced in the report

The financial impact of cyber attacks are significant. The average cyber breach in the Middle East costs roughly $7m–$7.5m, placing the region among the most expensive globally for organisations hit by attacks, according to IBM Security data.

Globally, cybercrime is now estimated to cost around $10.5tn annually, a figure that continues to climb as state-linked and organised attacks accelerate, based on industry estimates from Cybersecurity Ventures and other market research.

A fire at the largest of Australia’s two oil refineries has hit petrol production, company and government officials said on Thursday, just as the nation faces pressure to shore up fuel security with the Iran war disrupting global supply.

State fire authorities said the blaze, which broke out at a 120,000 barrels-per day refinery run by Viva Energy on Wednesday night, had been brought “under control” at noon (0200 GMT) on Thursday.

The fire came at a bad time for Australia as it depends on imports for 80 per cent of its fuel needs and has been racing to replace supply disrupted by the Middle East conflict, which has driven up energy prices worldwide.

“This is not a positive development, but obviously there’s a long way to go in terms of working out just what the impact is,” Energy Minister Chris Bowen told Channel Nine.

Viva Energy’s refinery supplies over half of the fuel in Australia’s second most populous state, Victoria, and a tenth of the country’s total demand.

The company said it expects output of petrol and aviation gasoline will be affected, but it will meet fuel demand through imports.

The plant is still producing jet fuel and diesel but at reduced levels for safety reasons, Bowen said.

“I would expect we’d see a price hike depending on the scale of the damage, and secondly, it reinforces the challenges we have in terms of sovereign and resilient capabilities here,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst John Coyne said.

The incident comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visits Kuala Lumpur on Thursday to discuss securing fuel supplies with his Malaysian counterpart, Anwar Ibrahim, following similar trips to Singapore and Brunei.

Malaysia and Brunei, which produce crude oil and refined products, could increase production but only to a certain degree, Coyne said.

No injuries have been reported from the fire at the refinery located about an hour’s drive from Melbourne. The cause of the blaze and the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

In the nearly seven weeks since the war began, supply fears have stoked panic buying, doubling demand for fuel in some areas, despite assurances from the government the market is well supplied.

Last month, Albanese announced temporary relief measures including halving the fuel excise and suspending the heavy road user charge for three months to help households cope with a surge in costs driven by the Iran war.

“It’s going to be a very bumpy and expensive few months,” said Tennant Reed, climate change and energy director at Australian Industry Group.

In March the government committed to underwriting a portion of fuel purchases by refiners and suppliers.

“We’ll continue to work with the company to do what we can to make sure that anything that is offline is brought online as soon as possible,” Albanese said at a media conference in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya.

Reed said the government could go to market to secure more supply to make up for any loss of production at Viva’s plant, but it would still take weeks for the cargoes to arrive.

Viva Energy CEO Scott Wyatt told reporters the primary focus was to completely put out the fire that hit operations at two units at the refinery before assessing damage and safely restoring production.

“All the other units are still operating and still in production but they are at minimum rates to maintain safety across the site,” he said.

“We’ll only start increasing production again once we’re confident that we can do that safely.”

Viva’s shares were on a trading halt pending an update on the impact of the fire.

Dubai Municipality has completed 36 per cent of a stormwater drainage system development project in Deira, part of ongoing efforts to enhance the emirate’s infrastructure efficiency, officials said.

The project, with a total cost of Dhs500m, will serve 13 key areas spanning 4,700 hectares through the development of 60km of stormwater drainage networks. Work is progressing as scheduled, with completion targeted by the end of 2027.

Director general engineer Marwan Ahmed bin Ghalita reviewed the project during a field visit, accompanied by senior executive, administrative and engineering officials.

The areas covered include Al Qusais 1 and 2, Oud Al Muteena, Mizhar 3, Al Twar 1 and 3, Muhaisnah 4, Al Nahda 2, Al Qusais Industrial Area 1, Al Garhoud, Casablanca Street, Dubai Airport area and Al Rashidiya.

As part of the first of three main phases, 22 km of drainage networks have been developed, with pipe diameters reaching up to 2.5 metres. A new pumping station near Dubai Creek, with a capacity of up to 8,000 litres per second, has been constructed to support the system’s efficiency.

Tasreef Programme: A Dhs30bn initiative to develop Dubai’s stormwater drainage network

The project is a key component of the Tasreef Programme, a Dhs30bn initiative to develop Dubai’s stormwater drainage network into a unified system characterised by high efficiency and flexibility. The programme aims to increase infrastructure capacity by 700 per cent, reduce construction, operation and maintenance costs by 20 per cent, and extend the lifespan of the network.

Bin Ghalita said the projects form a cornerstone of efforts to enhance strategic infrastructure through sustainable, advanced and adaptable solutions aligned with future requirements.

Adel Mohammed Al Marzouqi, CEO of the Waste and Sewerage Agency at Dubai Municipality, said the project focuses on enhancing operational efficiency through flexible engineering solutions in line with global standards, increasing capacity and reducing the risks of water accumulation while supporting service quality and business continuity.

Dubai Municipality said it continues to manage and develop stormwater and sewerage networks through an integrated approach aligned with global standards, supported by innovative engineering solutions and smart technologies.

Read: Dubai completes phase 1 of Al Quoz sewerage project worth Dhs250m

The Federal Tax Authority (FTA) said amendments to administrative penalties for violations of tax laws in the UAE have come into force, aiming to reduce compliance burdens and encourage voluntary disclosure by businesses.

The changes, introduced under Cabinet Decision No.(129) of 2025 amending certain provisions of Cabinet Decision No (40) of 2017 on administrative penalties imposed for violations of tax laws in the UAE, took effect on April 14, the authority said in a statement.

The FTA said the revisions are designed to support taxpayers, help them regularise their positions and improve compliance, while enhancing the country’s competitiveness and ease of doing business.

“This platform represents a shift away from resource-intensive traditional processes towards more efficient digital models that accelerate access to financial services and reduce operational costs,” said Abdulaziz Mohammed Al Mulla, director general of the FTA.

Updated rules linked to tax violations

The updated rules apply to violations under tax procedures, excise tax and value-added tax legislation, with several penalties reduced or recalibrated.

Among the changes, the penalty for failing to submit tax-related records in Arabic when requested has been reduced to Dhs5,000 ($1,361) from Dhs20,000.

Penalties for failing to update tax records have also been lowered, with fines set at Dhs1,000 per violation and Dhs5,000 for repeat offences within 24 months, compared with previous penalties of up to Dhs10,000.

In addition, the penalty for legal representatives failing to notify the authority of their appointment has been cut to Dhs1,000 from Dhs10,000, with such penalties payable from the legal representative’s own funds.

The authority said the amendments also cover penalties related to late tax payments, incorrect tax returns and failures to submit voluntary disclosures, among other violations.

Officials said the changes are intended to encourage taxpayers to correct errors promptly and submit voluntary disclosures without facing significant financial penalties.

The move forms part of broader efforts by the UAE to modernise its tax framework and support businesses while maintaining regulatory oversight in line with evolving economic requirements.

Read: Central Bank of UAE partners with Norbloc to develop unified e-KYC platform

The region is experiencing conflict. The Gulf’s energy infrastructure is under strain. A critical waterway is blocked. Oil and gas prices are rising sharply, threatening a global energy crisis. Sounds like 2026. It also sounds like 1990, when Kuwait was invaded and the world scrambled to keep the Gulf open. And 1980, when the Iran–Iraq War put the same Strait of Hormuz under threat.

And 1973, when an oil embargo quadrupled the price of a barrel in just four months. And 1956, when the Suez Canal was nationalised.

And yet, despite being the same, things are different for the UAE. In the 20th century, the threat was regional; in 2026, the UAE is faced with direct kinetic targeting of its infrastructure and its land.

The question therefore is not whether we have been here before. We have. The question is what is different this time, economically, geopolitically and technologically, and how the UAE can, and will, bounce back.

Oil is well

The first difference is the structure of the UAE economy itself. For most of the twentieth century, Gulf states like the UAE were single-product exporters. A disruption to oil transit was, for them, existential. In 2024, UAE’s non-oil sectors contributed over 75 per cent of GDP, amounting to Dhs1.342tn today – a vibrant economy, composed of manufacturing, construction, financial services and ICT – might slow down but will not stop when a tanker cannot pass Hormuz. Its sovereign wealth funds tell the same story at scale.

Sovereign wealth funds in the UAE reportedly manage assets worth nearly $3tn in 2026, deployed across airports, semiconductor firms, AI platforms, gaming studios, healthcare companies and sports franchises.

The UAE’s wealth is no longer hostage to the volatility that once defined it.

Even within the oil economy, exposure to the Strait has been deliberately reduced. The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline runs 380 kilometres to Fujairah on the Arabian Sea, bypassing Hormuz entirely. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline reaches Yanbu on the Red Sea. Neither is a complete substitute and both remain strategic targets, but together they represent a hedge that simply did not exist during the previous wars.

They have transformed a ‘total chokehold’ into a ‘manageable disruption’.

Read: How these UAE business leaders are staying the course

Innovation nation

The second difference is technology — building a new economy underneath the physical one. To understand this, we return to 1973. The “Oil Shokku” threatened Japan’s energy-intensive heavy industries. Constrained but not defeated, Japan launched the Moonlight Project for radical energy conservation and pivoted into VLSI chips — semiconductors and precision manufacturing that broke the country’s dependence on heavy industry and defined the next three decades of global technology leadership.

Crisis compresses the timeline between innovation and adoption. The UAE is already at the frontier of technological adoption, whether through research or investment. The crisis will accelerate the transition.

Take AI. Microsoft has committed over $15bn to AI and cloud infrastructure in the UAE through 2029 — backed by US government export licences for advanced Nvidia GPUs, a clear signal of strategic trust. G42 has built Jais, an open-source Arabic-language model serving 400 million speakers, and is delivering the infrastructure layer for Stargate UAE. Nearly 60 per cent of the UAE’s working population engages with AI tools daily — the highest adoption rate on earth. This makes it the world’s most active live sandbox for deployment at scale.

Then, there is cloud. On March 1, 2026, drones struck data centres in the UAE and Bahrain. Nearly 60 cloud services went offline. And yet: workloads rerouted, systems recovered, data held. Of the GCC’s 233 data centre developments, the affected facilities represented under two percent of total capacity.

The resilience of the infrastructure has demonstrated the UAE’s readiness to ensure commercial continuity. But it also has also done something strategic – it has offered a clear argument for the concept of digital embassies, announced by G42 at Davos just 40 days earlier. Digital embassies treat data sovereignty like a diplomatic flag, travelling with the workload regardless of which part of the world (or tomorrow – space?) the infrastructure sits in, enforced through legal, diplomatic and technical constructs.

For governments not yet ready for the AI boom, the core product for governments around the world might be the UAE’s plug-and-play infrastructure, but the USP is the UAE’s resilience despite stress.

The same pattern holds in Web3. The UAE is home to thousands of Web3 companies, licensed exchanges, custodians, DeFi projects and tokenisation platforms, operating under the enabling yet robust frameworks of VARA, ADGM and DIFC.

Binance, Kraken, OKX and Standard Chartered all call the UAE home. The FATF removed the UAE from its grey list in 2024 — a quiet but significant signal of institutional credibility. But it is not just the regulation. It is the culture. The UAE meets the vibe check — for traditional fund managers and for the young crypto founders building the next generation of wealth.

Home is where safety is

The third, and perhaps most overlooked, difference is the human one. In 1990, the threat of conflict triggered a mass exodus of the global workforce from the region. The “expat” was a transient figure, present for the pay cheque but rooted elsewhere.

Today, the UAE has engineered a profound shift in social contract and soft power. Through the introduction of Golden Visas, retirement pathways, and 100 percent foreign ownership, the transient worker has been replaced by the vested resident. People are no longer just working here; they are building businesses, raising families, in a jurisdiction that feels like a fortress of stability. And I say this as a founder and a mother who calls the UAE her home.

For me, the UAE is safe not despite conflict in the region. It is built to be safe precisely because of it.

The writer is the founder and principal policy strategist at Consilium Advisors.