UAE NESA Compliance

A national authority for cybersecurity in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the National Electronic Security Authority (NESA), is making strides to protect critical sectors from cyberattacks. A mandatory set of standards has been developed by NESA for government organizations, semi-government groups, and business entities that are identified as critical infrastructure to follow.

However, not all of these organizations are capable of implementing the guidelines on their own. It is, fortunately, possible to solve many issues around meeting compliance by using Logit.io.

Interested in learning more about how Logit.io can help you meet the UAE NESA auditing criteria? Sign up for a free 14-day trial or book a call with one of our compliance specialists to find out how we can help you.

According to the official NESA UAE Information Assurance Standards documentation, audit logs are mentioned as being an invaluable component of ensuring compliance with a variety of different criteria within the standards. Based on the analysis of audit logs, we can detect, prevent, and correct the use of systems and information in a way that could adversely affect an entity's security. Additionally, threat catalogues and statistics, as well as audit logs and incident records can also be used to determine the likelihood of a threat occurring.

It is important that the entity that is required to meet compliance requirements defines what events need to be recorded. They also need to determine how often the audit log must be examined, and how long these logs must be retained. It is also necessary for them to produce and keep audit logs containing details about user activities, exceptions, and events associated with information security.

Change management should also be implemented formally to ensure that all equipment, software, and procedures are adequately controlled. When changes are made, audit logs with all relevant information should be maintained. We provide a platform that lets you retain system audit logs and records so you can monitor, analyse, investigate and generate reports using our platform.

Some audit logs may need to be archived as part of the record retention policy outlined by NESA UAE Information Assurance Standards. A possible reason may be the requirement to collect and retain evidence in the event of an attack.

For enterprises storing sensitive data for an extended period of time, Logit.io offers Amazon S3 cold storage. Data hosted within cold storage can then be easily retrieved during an audit by the UAE NESA to demonstrate compliance with the regulations.