Qatar’s Digital Boom Has a Blind Spot: What the 2025-26 Threat Data Is Telling Us
Cyble's Qatar Threat Landscape Report 2025-26 finds Qilin dominated local ransomware while access brokers concentrated on Qatari BFSI and retail access sales.
Cyble's Qatar Threat Landscape Report 2025-26 describes a concentrated threat environment where Qilin accounted for essentially all observed ransomware activity in the country in 2025, including an October campaign, with The Gentleman, Everest, Crypto24, and Payload sharing the space in 2026. Access brokers are selling compromised access, with BFSI and retail accounting for more than half of underground listings, while the education sector sees the most breach and leak incidents. Exploitation activity surged for enterprise remote-access products from Microsoft, Fortinet, Ivanti, and Citrix. The report was published ahead of the CYSEC Qatar summit and cites Qatar's data privacy law and National Cyber Security Agency initiatives.
- Qilin was responsible for essentially all ransomware activity observed in Qatar in 2025
- Access broker listings tied to Qatar concentrate on BFSI and retail, over half of listings
- Education sector records the most data leaks, often via opportunistic PII harvesting
- Exploitation spiked in remote-access tools from Microsoft, Fortinet, Ivanti, and Citrix
- Hacktivism is low-volume and narrative-driven amid regional geopolitical tensions
- Products
- N-central
- Threat actors
- QilinThe GentlemanEverestCrypto24Payload
- Victims
- QatarEnergy
- Countries
- Qatar
From the original article
4 min read at cyble.com
Qatar is racing toward a knowledge-based, fully digital economy. Smart infrastructure, cloud-first government services, a financial sector that's increasingly API-driven, and critical energy assets like QatarEnergy's LNG operations layering more connected OT/ICS systems every year. That pace of transformation makes Qatar an attractive target in the cyber realm, right now.
By Mihir Bagwe · cyble.com
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