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ISSUE 110 | OCTOBER 2026

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GISEC GLOBAL 2026

SPECIAL REPORT

GISEC GLOBAL 2026 BRINGS SECURITY LEADERS, INNOVATORS AND PARTNERS TOGETHER TO STRENGTHEN CYBER DEFENCE ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST.

COVER STORY

AI raises stakes for OT cybersecurity resilience, says Naman Taldar

iConnect brings infrastructure and cybersecurity together to power enterprise resilience

Cloud intrusions now move at machine speed

Why Middle East enterprises must rethink data control

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SHARED RESPONSIBILITY, STRONGER CYBER RESILIENCE

C Talk to us: E-mail: sandhya.dmello@ cpimediagroup.com

Sandhya DMello Editor

ybersecurity has become central to

encryption requires organisations to

the Middle East’s digital ambitions.

understand their dependencies and consider

Every investment in artificial

migration over time. Digital sovereignty,

intelligence, cloud infrastructure and

meanwhile, demands attention to operational

connected services brings opportunity,

control, trusted partnerships and local

alongside a responsibility to protect the

capability alongside data residency.

systems, information and people on which progress depends.

Our special supplement brings together perspectives from across this evolving

GISEC GLOBAL 2026 brought that

security landscape. The interviews and

responsibility into focus. Across

insights examine priorities, from protecting

conversations with security leaders,

industrial environments and sensitive data

technology providers and partners, a

to governing identities and strengthening

consistent message emerged: resilience

security operations. Together, those

requires more than adopting another product. Organisations need clearer EVENTS

discussions underline

BUILDING REGIONAL CYBER RESILIENCE

strategic ambition into measurable action.

priorities, stronger governance and closer

People remain essential as skilled

collaboration between business leaders and

professionals, informed employees and

security teams.

engaged communities help turn security

AI illustrates this challenge as security

policies into everyday behaviour. Technology

professionals are exploring its potential

can support that effort, but leadership must

to accelerate investigations and improve

establish the expectations, resources and

response, while confronting threats that

accountability that sustain it.

exploit the same capabilities. Autonomous

For organisations across the region, the

agents also introduce questions about

task ahead is to connect innovation with

identity, access and accountability.

protection from the outset. GISEC offered

Confidence depends on understanding what

a platform for that conversation. Progress

such systems can do, which information they

will depend on what follows: partnerships

can reach and who retains control.

that deliver, investment guided by risk and

Quantum readiness adds another

a shared commitment to keeping the digital

dimension. Preparing for changes to

economy worthy of the trust placed in it.

FOUNDER, CPI Dominic De Sousa (1959-2015)

ADVERTISING Group Publishing Director Kausar Syed kausar.syed@cpimediagroup.com

the value of translating

EDITORIAL Editor Sandhya DMello sandhya.dmello@cpimediagroup.com

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NEWS

THREATBOOK ACQUIRES CYBERSTRIKEAI TO EXPAND AUTONOMOUS PENETRATION TESTING Acquisition will see ThreatBook retain CyberStrikeAI’s open-source edition while introducing an Enterprise Edition with on-premises deployment, local data controls and full agent audit trails. ThreatBook has acquired CyberStrikeAI, an open-source AI penetration testing platform designed to help security teams run continuous and automated security assessments within controlled environments. Written in Go, CyberStrikeAI enables security teams to identify vulnerabilities that may be missed by conventional testing approaches, allowing organisations to gain greater visibility into potential weaknesses and make faster risk decisions. Launched in late 2025, the platform has attracted more than 7,000 stars on GitHub. ThreatBook said public internet-scanning data also indicates that more than 3,000 CyberStrikeAI instances are currently in use worldwide. ThreatBook plans to maintain Feng Xue, Founder and CEO, ThreatBook. the platform’s open-source edition while introducing a separate CyberStrikeAI Enterprise than anyone could have imagined. The Edition. The enterprise offering will idea that attackers need time to plan and support fully on-premises deployment, stage an attack is outdated — and simply keeping organisational data local while untrue. Automated reconnaissance, providing permission controls and a vulnerability discovery and exploitation complete audit trail of agent activity. have already eaten into the response Additional safeguards are also planned window that defenders once relied on,” for the open-source edition to reduce the Xue said. potential for misuse. He added that autonomous security capabilities should be accessible to Defenders gain AI capabilities defenders seeking to understand and Feng Xue, Founder and CEO of counter increasingly automated attack ThreatBook, said the acceleration of techniques. AI-enabled attacks was significantly “These capabilities should not sit only reducing the amount of time available for in the hands of cybercriminals, APT security teams to respond. groups and saboteurs. They belong with “AI attacks are now evolving far faster the defenders who are committed to

OCTOBER 2026

building a safer world — levelling the playing field and letting defenders think and act the way attackers do. CyberStrikeAI is mission-critical technology that helps security teams get there.” CyberStrikeAI provides oneline deployment and supports native Model Context Protocol orchestration, allowing security tools to be invoked through standardised workflows that can be extended using YAML files. The platform includes more than 100 built-in tool templates covering different stages of the attack chain, from reconnaissance through exploitation. Visual attack-chain tracking gives security teams visibility into individual actions performed by the AI agent, while a multimodel decision engine allows organisations to connect their preferred large language model as the platform’s reasoning layer. Users can also describe a testing target using natural language and receive a structured security assessment report based on the resulting analysis. Enterprise edition planned ThreatBook said it will continue investing in both the open-source and enterprise versions of CyberStrikeAI, with a focus on making autonomous penetration testing more reliable, controllable and easier for security teams to deploy. A trial version of the Enterprise Edition is already available in Mainland China. ThreatBook expects CyberStrikeAI Enterprise Edition to become available globally during the fourth quarter of 2026.

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ZERO TRUST PIONEERS RELEASE AI-ERA CYBER RESILIENCE PLAYBOOK New book led by Zero Trust creator John Kindervag examines AI agents, non-human identities and machine-speed attacks while outlining a resilience-focused security model. Illumio has released Cyber Resilience at Machine Speed: The Zero Trust Model for the AI Era, a new book led by John Kindervag, creator of Zero Trust, with contributions from cybersecurity leaders who helped shape the model’s evolution from concept to mainstream security strategy. Published on 2 October 2026, the book examines how Zero Trust principles must evolve as artificial intelligence changes the speed, scale and nature of cyber threats. AI agents, non-human identities and increasingly automated attacks are creating new challenges for organisations seeking to control access and limit breach impact. Artificial intelligence is changing how attacks are launched, how identities operate and how organisations make trust decisions. Attackers can increasingly operate at machine speed, raising the importance of cyber resilience and rapid containment. The book argues that core Zero Trust principles — including verification, least privilege, segmentation and containment — remain critical in an AI-powered threat landscape. “A wise person once told me there are no great books, only great chapters,” said John Kindervag. “So, I went to the people I trust and asked each of them to write their own great chapter. The result is a collection of ideas, experiences, and practical lessons from some of the smartest minds in cybersecurity, showing how Zero Trust can help organisations stay resilient as AI reshapes the threat landscape.” Contributors include Dr Chase Cunningham, who helped advance Forrester’s Zero Trust eXtended framework; George Finney, author of

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John Kindervag, creator of Zero Trust.

Project Zero Trust and CISO for The University of Texas System; Jason Garbis, co-chair of the Cloud Security Alliance’s Zero Trust Working Group; Michelle Savage, co-author of Agentic AI + Zero Trust; and Josh Woodruff, creator of the Agentic Trust Framework. Other contributors include Clint Bruce, Jonathan Flack, Lieuwe Jan Koning, Rich Mogull, Don Yeske and Tony Scott, former US federal CIO. The book follows the five-step Zero Trust model while exploring emerging security challenges associated with AI, agentic systems and non-human identities. A central theme is the need for

organisations to move beyond preventionfocused cybersecurity strategies and develop stronger capabilities to contain breaches once attackers gain access. Readers are guided through methods for protecting critical assets using the five-step Zero Trust model, reducing attacker movement through segmentation and policy-based controls, and translating business requirements into enforceable security policies. The book also examines ways to address security risks arising from agentic AI and non-human identities while strengthening operational resilience through breach containment.

OCTOBER 2026

NEWS

GCF, UN WOMEN, AND ITU RECOGNISE ORGANISATIONS CHAMPIONING WOMEN IN CYBERSECURITY Four organisations have been recognised for outstanding progress in advancing women’s participation, leadership, and impact in the global cybersecurity workforce at the Women in Cyber Awards 2026 ceremony in New York. The ceremony was held during a High-Level Convening on Women Empowerment in Cybersecurity, on the sidelines of the 81st Session of the UN General Assembly. The Women in Cyber Awards were launched this year by the Global Cybersecurity Forum (GCF), with the support of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and UN Women, as a part of the Women Empowerment in Cybersecurity (WEC) global initiative, instated by His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, and implemented by GCF. Amid a global shortage of 2.8 million cybersecurity professionals, where women account for only 24% of the workforce – according to GCF’s 2024 Cybersecurity Workforce Report – the WEC initiative aims to strengthen global cyber resilience by increasing women’s participation in the cybersecurity workforce, supporting capacity-building, and contributing to efforts to close the global cybersecurity talent gap. Applicants for the inaugural edition of • Four winning organisations named across the Awards’ four tracks focused on women’s entry, visibility, retention, and leadership in cybersecurity • Ceremony held at United Nations Headquarters in New York during a high-level convening on the sidelines of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly

OCTOBER 2026

the Awards spanned four continents and included organisations from the public and private sectors, academia, and nongovernmental organisations, ranging from startups to SMEs and large enterprises. spanned four continents and included organizations from the public and private sectors, academia, and non-governmental organizations, ranging from startups to SMEs and large enterprises. Following evaluation by an expert panel and final selection by a high-level international jury, United Cybersecurity Alliance (UCA), Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), Sri Lanka CERT, and CYBERLEAD were announced as the winners of the inaugural edition, with one organisation recognised across each of the four award tracks. Together, the four award tracks recognise a range of efforts that strengthen women’s participation, advancement, and long-term success in cybersecurity: building early interest and pathways into the profession, strengthening visibility and recognition, enabling women to enter, grow in, and remain in cybersecurity roles, and supporting their advancement into leadership and entrepreneurship. • Pipeline Builder Award: Presented to the United Cybersecurity Alliance (UCA), for initiatives

including its “100 Women in 100 Days Cybersecurity Career Accelerator” that have delivered cybersecurity training and career support to women globally, with a focus on those from underserved communities. • Advocacy Champion Award: Presented to SABIC, for enabling women to lead cybersecurity mentorship and talent development, supporting women’s higher education, and increasing women’s representation in its operational technology and industrial control systems (OT/ICS) roles from 26% to 86%. • Cybersecurity Workforce Enablement Award: Presented to Sri Lanka CERT, the country’s National Centre for Cyber Security, for delivering internships, professional development, and technical certification, enabling women to enter, progress, and remain in cybersecurity roles. • Leadership & Entrepreneurship Award: Presented to CYBERLEAD for equipping women for cybersecurity leadership roles through an executive education program, the Women in Cyber Leadership Scholarship, and access to a network of leaders and mentors.

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EXABEAM ADVANCES AGENTIC SOC WITH AI-POWERED SECURITY OPERATIONS New cloud and on-premises capabilities combine AI-driven investigation, execution, visibility and governance while keeping analysts in control. Exabeam has introduced a new set of capabilities designed to bring agentic security operations to cloud and onpremises environments, combining AI-led investigation, execution, visibility and governance while retaining human oversight. The company said traditional analyst workflows are struggling to keep pace with machine-speed threats and the growing complexity of autonomous AI agents. Its latest updates build on more than a decade of applied machine learning in security operations, including user and entity behaviour analytics (UEBA), Exabeam Nova Steve Wilson, Chief AI and Product AI, the Exabeam MCP Server and Agent Officer, Exabeam. Behavior Analytics (ABA). “The next generation of the SOC won’t be Exabeam’s own security operations team, defined by more alerts or more automation. It Nova AI triaged an average case in about 10 will be defined by how effectively people and minutes, compared with approximately five AI agents work together,” said Steve Wilson, hours for a human analyst. The company Chief AI and Product Officer at Exabeam. said this represents a 30-fold improvement in “The Agentic SOC gives security teams triage speed. the speed and scale of AI without giving up A new Agentic SOC Plugin for Anthropic human judgment, context, or control. That’s Claude Code and OpenAI Codex brings how defenders keep pace with threats that guided investigation workflows into increasingly operate at machine speed.” analysts’ AI tools. Security teams can use Michelle Abraham, Research Vice natural-language commands to triage President, Security and Trust at IDC, said alerts, prioritise cases and investigate the shift towards an agentic SOC is about incidents. Exabeam said the plugin is the changing where analysts apply their time first in a planned series of skills for its and judgement rather than removing them Agent Skills Marketplace. from the process. AI agents can take on Deeper integration with Claude Enterprise investigation, context gathering and repetitive also gives security teams greater visibility into execution, allowing security teams to focus AI activity by normalising prompts, tool calls human expertise on higher-value decisions, and actions into a single timeline. Event-time she said. analysis and behaviour-based correlation are used to identify rogue agents and behavioural AI investigation and visibility drift. Exabeam said Nova AI can now operate Executive Digest and Outcomes Navigator across the platform as a persistent Overrides are intended to connect security investigator, gathering context, running operations with business outcomes. secondary searches and retrieving entity Executive Digest provides board-level profiles as incidents unfold. Related Cases security metrics, while Outcomes Navigator automatically groups connected incidents to Overrides allows teams to tailor risk scoring give analysts a broader view of activity. and separate compliance metrics across According to measurements from business units.

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Eduardo Sulvarán Velázquez, Subdirector Cyber Risk Management at E-Global, said Nova AI had helped the organisation prioritise cases more effectively and give analysts faster access to the context needed for security decisions. On-premises agentic security Exabeam is also extending AI-assisted security operations to on-premises environments through its modernised LogRhythm SIEM Platform. The update is aimed at organisations that need to keep infrastructure, security data or AI workloads within their own environments. New out-of-the-box generative AI collectors for ChatGPT, Google Gemini and GitHub Copilot provide centralised visibility into enterprise AI activity through LogRhythm Intelligence Analytics. A community Model Context Protocol server also allows teams to query, investigate and triage security data using local generative AI models without moving data outside the organisation. The platform has also moved from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch through an inplace migration. Exabeam said the update improves speed and scale while supporting a new self-service reporting engine with AI governance and audit-ready compliance reporting. Open-source security momentum Exabeam said the Open Agent and AI Security Community, which it founded in June 2026, has recorded more than 10,000 downloads. The initiative is intended to bring security practitioners, researchers and engineers together around open approaches to agent and AI security. Exabeam said the latest capabilities are designed to help security teams respond more quickly to machine-speed threats while maintaining human control over investigation and response decisions.

OCTOBER 2026

NEWS

CLOUDFLARE PLANS PUBLIC CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY FOR POST-QUANTUM WEB New service will support traditional TLS certificates and post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates, giving website operators a migration path towards quantum-resistant web security Cloudflare has announced plans and Mozilla root programmes. to become a public Certificate The company said combining an Authority (CA), extending its web acquired root with acceptance into security infrastructure to support major browser and operatingboth conventional encryption and system root programmes should next-generation post-quantum help its certificates gain broad certificates. recognition across the web. The company said the new Building on an earlier service will issue the digital experiment with Chrome, certificates websites use to encrypt Cloudflare also plans to begin traffic and prove their identity issuing production MTCs designed to visitors. Alongside traditional around built-in transparency and certificates, Cloudflare plans to post-quantum protection while support Merkle Tree Certificates limiting performance overhead. (MTCs), designed to help websites prepare for a future in which Certificate model redesigned quantum computers could weaken Cloudflare launched Universal Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder, Cloudflare. widely used cryptographic systems. SSL in 2014, offering free TLS Cloudflare said the approach Cloudflare made encryption free and certificates to millions of websites is intended to give website operators a automatic for millions of websites. and helping expand encrypted web traffic. route towards post-quantum security Today, we’re taking the next step by Its proposed public CA is intended to add without requiring new tools or wholesale building an open, transparent and another independent, high-scale issuer to infrastructure rebuilds. reliable Certificate Authority for the the certificate ecosystem. entire Internet.” The company said its public certificate Preparing web trust “Upgrading the web’s security before infrastructure is being redesigned around Certificate authorities underpin secure quantum computers can break it is one modern operational scale, transparency web connections by verifying website of the biggest coordination challenges in and faster incident response. identities and enabling encrypted the history of the Internet. By balancing • Glass-box operational transparency: sessions. Cloudflare said the current support for older devices with brandCloudflare plans to publish ecosystem remains concentrated among new, post-quantum tech, we’re providing detailed operational and technical a relatively small number of dominant a permanent safety net, so the Internet information, provide reproducible issuers, creating potential systemic risk stays fast, reliable, and secure for all code builds and maintain a live if a major provider is compromised or devices, no matter what comes next.” public health dashboard so the wider disrupted. internet community can inspect CA The company also highlighted the Legacy support planned operations. longer-term challenge posed by quantum To improve compatibility with older • Zero-downtime incident response: computing. Much of today’s certificate smartphones, operating systems and Support for automated renewal infrastructure was designed before devices that no longer receive software signalling under RFC 9773 is quantum threats became a practical updates, Cloudflare plans to acquire intended to allow certificates to consideration, increasing pressure an established root certificate. Root be replaced in the background at on the industry to prepare migration certificates tell browsers and devices scale, reducing outage risk during paths before cryptographically relevant whether a certificate authority should be revocations or security updates. quantum systems emerge. trusted. • Scalable post-quantum security: Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder Cloudflare has also applied for MTCs use lightweight proofs to verify of Cloudflare, said: “Twelve years ago, inclusion in the Chrome, Apple, Microsoft that a certificate is recorded in a trusted registry, reducing the need 10

OCTOBER 2026

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to transmit large post-quantum signatures with every connection. • Frictionless web migration: Website operators are expected to be able to manage conventional TLS certificates and next-generation

MTCs within one system, supporting gradual migration rather than immediate cutovers. Rollout begins in 2027 Cloudflare said it will begin issuing

classical certificates after completing the relevant browser root programme application and acceptance processes. Production issuance of Merkle Tree Certificates is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027.

DUBAI ELECTRONIC SECURITY CENTER LAUNCHES ‘DON’T GET PLAYED’ ANTI-SCAM CAMPAIGN Cybersecurity Awareness Month initiative offers AED 230,000 in competition prizes while urging UAE residents to pause and verify suspicious requests. Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC) has launched “Don’t Get Played”, a cybersecurity awareness campaign running throughout October as part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The initiative aims to help members of the community recognise common scam tactics and warning signs while promoting a simple response to suspicious requests: pause, verify and avoid being deceived. The campaign includes competitions with a total prize pool of AED 230,000 for university students, content creators and members of the UAE community, alongside Security Operations Center (SOC) teams from Dubai Government entities. Participants are invited to develop innovative cybersecurity content and solutions, with competition details, eligibility requirements and registration available through dontgetplayed.ae. Every scam has a tell Fraud techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Data from digital identity verification and cybersecurity company Sumsub shows that sophisticated, multistep fraud attempts detected by the platform increased by 180% in 2025 compared with 2024, rising from 10% to 28% of all identity fraud cases detected. DESC said the campaign focuses on warning signs that can reveal a scam, including urgency and pressure, requests for secrecy, unusual demands and attempts to stop a person from independently verifying a request. The initiative also addresses newer forms of fraud involving impersonation

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and AI-manipulated voices, images and documents. A central figure in the campaign is “Yado Salama”, a virtual Emirati grandmother whose strong instincts make her difficult to fool. Through a series of scenarios, Yado Salama helps audiences identify suspicious behaviour and reinforces the importance of pausing and verifying before taking action. Yousuf Hamad Al Shaibani, CEO of the Dubai Electronic Security Center, said: “As digital technologies continue to evolve, scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated and convincing. At the Dubai Electronic Security Center, we are committed to equipping members of the community with the knowledge and confidence to respond to these attempts safely.” “Through the ‘Don’t Get Played’ campaign, we are encouraging everyone to adopt a

simple but powerful habit: pause before you act and verify through a trusted source.” He added: “As we mark the Year of the Family, the campaign also reminds us of the role each of us can play in protecting those around us. Through these efforts, we continue working towards making Dubai the safest city in cyberspace and building a secure, resilient and confident digital community.” Community outreach across October Throughout October, “Don’t Get Played” will reach audiences through social media, digital channels, outdoor advertising and community activations, supported by partners from across the government and private sectors. More information about the campaign, competitions and participation is available at dontgetplayed.ae.

OCTOBER 2026

NEWS

KNOWBE4 WARNS SCOUTING ATTACKS HIT 13-WEEK HIGH AHEAD OF PHISHING SURGE Reconnaissance activity across KnowBe4 Cloud Email Security customers jumped 99.2% above yearly benchmark averages, signalling a potential rise in targeted phishing. KnowBe4 has warned that reconnaissance activity, commonly known as scouting attacks, has reached a 13-week high across its Cloud Email Security customer base, rising 99.2% above yearly benchmark averages. Trend data collected between 1 June and 31 August 2026 indicates a sharp increase in these low-profile probes, which KnowBe4 said can act as an early indicator of a coming rise in targeted phishing activity. Scouting attacks explained A scouting attack is a reconnaissance email sent without a malicious payload. Rather than attempting to trigger an immediate click or attachment download, attackers use these messages to verify whether an email address is active, test automated out-of-office responses and gather contextual information about the intended target. Because the messages contain no malicious links or files, conventional secure email gateways may not identify them as threats. Attackers typically begin with an innocuous message, such as a blank email, a short line of text, a calendar invitation or a delivery receipt. Bounce notifications, automated replies or direct responses can confirm that a mailbox is active and provide information about the person behind it. Details collected from email signatures, job titles and out-of-office messages can then be used to map organisational structures and build more detailed target profiles. Attackers may use the information themselves or sell validated address lists to other threat actors before launching higher-

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Jack Chapman, SVP of Threat Intelligence, KnowBe4.

precision phishing campaigns. Jack Chapman, SVP of Threat Intelligence at KnowBe4, said: “Scouting attacks represent the quiet phase that routinely precedes a major wave of cyber activity.” “Because these reconnaissance emails carry no malicious payloads, standard security gateways let them pass through unnoticed and they go unseen by security teams, meaning when attacks come there is no warning. Attackers use these simple probes to verify live mailboxes, validate attack targets and gain contextual intelligence about the users and organisation.” Chapman added: “This rapid 99.2% surge is a clear warning sign that a

major spike in phishing attacks is set to land in the latter half of the year.” Recycled breach data fuels risk KnowBe4 said the increase also highlights how attackers’ datavalidation capabilities are becoming more sophisticated. Information exposed in previous data breaches and curated attack lists can be recycled, validated and resold, extending the impact of compromised data long after the original incident. The company said organisations should account for reconnaissance activity as part of their wider emailsecurity strategy, particularly as attackers continue to refine targeting before launching phishing campaigns.

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MICROSOFT, UAE CYBER SECURITY COUNCIL AND CORE42 UNITE TO SCALE AI-POWERED CYBER DEFENSE ACROSS UAE GOVERNMENT Microsoft expands the availability of MDASH to eligible customers in the UAE. Microsoft, the UAE Cyber Security Council (CSC) and Core42, a G42 company, today announced plans to deploy MDASH, Microsoft’s AI-powered cybersecurity capability, across UAE government entities. The collaboration aims to strengthen national cyber resilience, accelerate secure digital transformation and help government security teams respond faster to evolving threats. MDASH uses advanced AI models and automated analysis to identify vulnerabilities, prioritize risks and improve security posture at speed and scale. The initiative supports the UAE’s ambition to build a trusted, resilient digital ecosystem and equip government organizations with advanced cyber defense capabilities. Under the proposed collaboration, CSC will support government adoption and responsible use of AI for cybersecurity through the UAE’s National AI Test and Validation Lab. Core42, through its Sovereign Public Cloud offering in partnership with Microsoft will provide onboarding, implementation and capacitybuilding support, with a focus on security, privacy and operational resilience. The collaboration reinforces the UAE’s ambition to lead in digital innovation while building one of the world’s most advanced cyber ecosystems. H.E. Dr. Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cyber Security for the UAE Government, said: “Code safety is a national priority and a cornerstone of cyber resilience. As AI becomes integral to government and critical services, securing the code that underpins these systems must be built in from the outset, not treated as an afterthought. Bringing MDASH

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H.E. Dr. Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cyber Security for the UAE Government and Hayete Gallot, Executive Vice President, Security and Emerging Technologies at Microsoft. capabilities to the UAE is a major catalyst for wider adoption of AI-powered code security across government and our national digital ecosystem.”.” Microsoft will provide technical expertise, onboarding and implementation guidance for participating government entities. Hayete Gallot, Executive Vice President, Security and Emerging Technologies at Microsoft, said: “Governments around the world are increasingly looking to AI as a force multiplier to protect the nation, its critical assets, and people. AI can be a powerful tool for cybersecurity. Together with the UAE Cyber Security Council and Core42, we will help government organizations strengthen resilience, improve cyber readiness and build capacity for emerging threats.” Core42 will provide local expertise, integration with their sovereign controls platform and implementation services to support MDASH deployment across

participating government organizations. Talal M. Al Kaissi, Chief Executive Officer, Core42 said:"The UAE has made a deliberate choice to lead in AI adoption. That leadership brings a responsibility to ensure our digital infrastructure is secure, resilient and trusted. This collaboration combines world-class AI security capabilities with sovereign infrastructure and local expertise, giving government entities access to advanced cyber defense capabilities while keeping security, privacy and operational control at the center. Core42, along with the wider G42 ecosystem are well positioned to help amplify the benefits of this partnership to our customers.” The parties plan a phased rollout, beginning with awareness sessions, pilots, technical workshops and onboarding for government entities. The initiative will help government organizations protect critical services, strengthen trust and prepare for the next generation of cyber threats.

OCTOBER 2026

NEWS

SOPHOS LAUNCHES CISO ADVANTAGE TO TURN CYBER RISK INSIGHTS INTO SECURITY STRATEGY Delivered through Sophos Fusion, Sophos CISO Advantage uses agentic AI with human judgement to give every organisation, with or without a CISO, a security program it can measure, fund, and prove. Sophos, a global cybersecurity leader, today launched Sophos CISO Advantage, an agentic AI-enabled solution that connects security operations to security strategy. The solution gives organisations a clear picture of their cyber risk, a prioritised plan to reduce it, and measurable proof of progress, in plain language that business leaders can understand, fund, and act on. Delivered through Sophos Fusion, the Sophos AINative Cybersecurity Defense System, Sophos CISO Advantage begins rolling out today across North America, the UK, and the rest of Europe. Sophos CISO Advantage defines a new category in the market, turning security data into strategy and measurable improvement, driven by agentic AI. The offering assesses an organisation’s environment, maps it against industry frameworks, and turns the result into a prioritised plan at a speed and scale that human experts alone cannot reach. For most organisations, creating and executing against a strong cybersecurity strategy is both the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge in strengthening their resilience. The cybersecurity industry has invested heavily in tools that prevent, detect, and respond, with global spending on information security expected to reach $240 billion in 2026. However, despite significant investment in cybersecurity tools, the market remains fragmented. Organisations often rely on disconnected assessments, spreadsheets, and point solutions to understand and manage cyber risk, making it difficult to measure progress, prioritise investments, and

OCTOBER 2026

Rob Harrison, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Sophos.

demonstrate the impact of cybersecurity programs. The gap, in large part, is due to a scarcity in security leadership and talent. According to the 2026 CISO Report, an estimated 35,000 CISOs serve 359 million businesses worldwide, a ratio of roughly 10,000 to one. Hiring alone cannot close the gap. In fact, our 2026 MSP Perspectives Report found that on

average, 46% of customers look to their MSP to act as their CISO now; with 84% of MSPs expecting the demand for CISO services to increase over the next year. Organisations without a CISO lack the skillset and resources to assess risk and build a strategy. Organisations with a CISO are increasingly asked to prove control effectiveness and demonstrate progress to boards, regulators, and

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insurers, even as the role strains under pressure, as average tenure of a CISO runs 18 to 26 months and 75% are considering a job change. Sophos CISO Advantage closes that gap. It builds a security assessment unique to each organisation’s environment and threat profile, maps controls against frameworks including NIST CSF, CIS v8, Cyber Essentials Plus, and NCSC CAF, and turns the results into a prioritised, budgetaligned roadmap of what to fix first, what it costs, and why it matters to the business. Because it is part of Sophos Fusion, every assessment is informed by live threat intelligence and the collective insight from 625,000+ Sophos-defended organisations, rather than generic benchmarks. “Good security strategy has always required expertise that’s too scarce to scale, so it’s stayed a luxury only the largest enterprises could afford.” said Rob Harrison, senior vice president, product management, Sophos. “Sophos CISO Advantage changes that. We built it around the question every board is now asking its security team: are we safer than we were last quarter, and can you prove it? Putting a credible answer within reach of any organisation, not just the ones that can staff a large security team, is how the industry starts to close the resilience gap.” Every organisation’s path to strengthening their security strategy with Sophos CISO Advantage is different. Some want to own and run the program themselves, with their internal team driving strategy and using Sophos CISO Advantage as their system of record. Others may start with an MSP partner to stand up the program, build confidence, and then transition to running it inhouse. Many will start with a baseline assessment of their program, and move into a continuous managed service delivered entirely through a trusted partner. Sophos CISO Advantage is designed to support all three.

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For the growing number of MSPs already acting as the de facto security leader for their customers , it turns that role into a structured, scalable, and billable service. For organisations that want to own their program directly, it provides the system, the framework, and the AI-powered workflows to do it without a dedicated security team. Whichever path fits the business, Sophos CISO Advantage delivers the same outcome: a clear program, measurable improvement, and reporting that leadership can act on.

is improving. The vendors that can bring that together in one AI-native system, from assessment through remediation, will be the ones that shape where this market goes next.”

Early Validation from the Market

David Peck, President, Trebron Security, Lancaster, Pennsylvania “CISO Advantage gives us a structured way to deliver something we were already doing informally. We can now walk into any customer conversation with a clear program, a prioritised plan, and reporting that leadership can buy into. It has elevated how we position ourselves.”

Phil Haris, research director, governance, risk and compliance solutions, IDC “CISOs are being asked to move faster, manage more risk, and show meaningful progress to boards, regulators, and insurers. There are too many tools out there that track activity without any insight. What security leaders need now is a solution that helps them understand where they stand, take action, and clearly show how their security posture

Availability Sophos CISO Advantage is available beginning October 2026 across North America, the UK, and the rest of Europe, as an annual term license or as a monthly subscription through MSP Flex. Global availability is expected by the end of calendar year 2026. Sophos CISO Advantage Plus, which adds convergence, risk, and governance capabilities for enterprise organisations, is targeted for mid-2027.

OCTOBER 2026

COVER STORY

/ GISEC GLOBAL

CYBER FIRST, QUANTUM NEXT GISEC GLOBAL 2026 MOVED TO EXPO CITY DUBAI WITH A BIGGER FOOTPRINT AND A SHARPER AGENDA, PUTTING AI THREATS, POSTQUANTUM READINESS AND DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY AT THE HEART OF THE REGION’S SECURITY DEBATE

OCTOBER 2026

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ybersecurity, long treated as the final chapter of the digital transformation story, became its opening line when GISEC Global 2026 gathered the world’s security community in Dubai this September. Under the theme ‘Cyber First: The New Digital Order’, the 15th edition of GISEC Global moved to Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City Dubai from 16 to 18 September, filling South Halls 1 to 10 with an exhibition footprint some 20 per cent larger than in 2025. Organised by inD, the joint venture between Dubai World Trade Centre and Informa, and hosted by the UAE Cyber Security Council, the event was built to draw more than 25,000 cybersecurity professionals, 750-plus exhibiting brands and 350-plus expert speakers, with participants from more than 180 countries, up from 160 a year earlier. Delegates from over 130 countries attended on opening day alone, and organisers called the edition a sell-out. What emerged across three days was less a trade show than a status report on a discipline under strain. Artificial

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intelligence is accelerating attacks and defences simultaneously. Quantum computing is advancing from laboratory promise to commercial strategy, with today’s encryption firmly in its sights. Geopolitical fragmentation, meanwhile, is forcing governments to ask how much of their digital estate they genuinely control. GISEC 2026 set out to address all three, and in doing so showed how tightly the three are now bound together. Cybersecurity takes the top table Adopting Cyber First as the overarching theme was a deliberate signal that cybersecurity has outgrown its technical roots to become a boardroom, government and national priority. “The digital economy can only thrive if it is built on trust, resilience and secure innovation,” said Trixie LohMirmand, Executive Vice President of inD. “Today, cybersecurity is no longer solely a technology issue. It is fundamental to economic growth, national resilience and international competitiveness.” The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 helps explain the urgency. Some 94 per cent

of organisations expect AI to be the biggest driver of cybersecurity change over the coming year, 87 per cent identify AI-related vulnerabilities as the fastestgrowing cyber risk, and 91 per cent of the world’s largest organisations have already adapted their security strategies in response to geopolitical volatility. To meet that shift, the programme introduced a Cyber First Leadership Summit for ministers, national cyber authorities and global CISOs, a new National Defence and Sovereign Cyber Track, and an expanded Government Programme hosted by the Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC) alongside the UAE Cyber Security Council. Opening the Main Stage, H.E. Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of the UAE Cyber Security Council, linked cyber resilience directly to national and economic security, warning that critical infrastructure remains a prime target for AI-enabled threats. His prescription was collective rather than technological. “Cybersecurity culture is the responsibility of everybody. Our first line of defence is still the community,” he said.

OCTOBER 2026

COVER STORY

/ GISEC GLOBAL

H.E. Amer Sharaf, CEO of the Cyber Security Systems and Services Sector at DESC, carried the argument to city level in a session on building the world’s safest city in an age of AI-powered threats. Pointing to AI-powered defence, trusted digital identity, resilience by design and the “human firewall”, he said: “Safety is not only in the physical world, but also in the digital world. Make cybersecurity a shared responsibility.” DESC also returned with second editions of the Dubai Cyber Challenge Government Edition and the School of Cyber Defense, which H.E. Yousuf Hamad Al Shaibani, Chief Executive of DESC, described as “our continued investment in strengthening cyber capabilities at every level”. AI cuts both ways Few themes travelled further across the halls than artificial intelligence, and few speakers treated it as purely good news. Emmy-nominated actor Michael Kelly brought an unexpected perspective in his keynote, ‘The Deepfake Decade: What Hollywood Learned First’, arguing that voice and likeness have become part of a person’s digital identity and must be protected through verification, content authentication and meaningful

OCTOBER 2026

consent. “Your voice and your likeness are your identity. No one should be able to use them without your knowledge and consent,” he said. On the exhibition floor, vendors pressed the point that AI has created an entirely new attack surface. Ayman Hammoudeh, Senior Director of Sales Engineering at Cohesity, warned that the same AI agents driving productivity “can unintentionally disrupt operations, compromise trusted data, and amplify errors at scale,” adding that protecting

AI now means safeguarding the agents, memory, data and systems beneath the models. Hammoudeh offered a sobering statistic. “Only 2% of organisations worldwide can recover from a cyberattack within 24 hours,” he said. Law enforcement is grappling with the same duality. During a session on financial cybercrime, Yashasvi Yadav, Additional Director General of Police at the Maharashtra State Cyber Department in India, and Major Khalid Tahlak, Deputy Director of the Cyber and AI Crimes

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H.E. Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of the UAE Cyber Security Council, addressing delegates on the Main Stage at GISEC Global 2026, Dubai Exhibition Centre, Expo City Dubai.

Department at Dubai Police, described an increasingly organised, cross-border and AI-enabled criminal ecosystem. Speed, both stressed, is decisive in disrupting stolen funds before they cross jurisdictions, while AI is now helping investigators identify money-mule accounts and detect deepfakes. “AI is a double-edged sword… whoever leverages the AI potential better would be the winner in this,” Yadav said. Prashant Haldankar, Managing Director and Group CISO at Sekuro, captured the operational tension. “Attackers are already moving at machine speed, and that’s reshaping how we think about defence,” he said, adding

that the task is to help teams keep pace “while making sure human judgement stays at the centre of every decision that matters.” Preparing for Q-Day If AI dominated the present tense, quantum computing owned the future. The new Quantum Security Summit, hosted by the UAE Cyber Security Council and the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), moved the debate from theoretical risk to practical migration, covering post-quantum cryptography (PQC), cryptographic discovery, migration governance and certification. Dr Bushra Al Blooshi, Executive

CYBERSECURITY CULTURE IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EVERYBODY. OUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE IS STILL THE COMMUNITY. H.E. DR MOHAMED AL KUWAITI, HEAD OF THE UAE CYBER SECURITY COUNCIL. www.tahawultech.com

Director of Cybersecurity Governance and Risk Management at DESC, examined how nations are building PQC roadmaps and migration timelines, while experts from TII, ENEC and CPX worked through the realities of transition inside critical entities, alongside contributions from IBM and Google Cloud. Dr Saeed Aldhaheri, Chairman of the Robotics and Automation Society, was unambiguous about timing. “The UAE must begin migrating to quantumsafe cryptography now, strengthening crypto agility, national capabilities and talent to protect sensitive data before quantum threats become a practical reality,” he said. Running in parallel, the Global Quantum Drill evolved the former Global Cyber Drill into what organisers planned as the world’s largest quantum readiness exercise. The week’s biggest announcement came on day two, when inD unveiled Global Quantum X (GQX) by GITEX, a new event to be co-located with GISEC Global

OCTOBER 2026

COVER STORY

/ GISEC GLOBAL

2027 at Dubai Exhibition Centre from 4 to 6 May 2027, in strategic partnership with the UAE Cyber Security Council. GQX will span quantum computing, quantumsecured communications and nextgeneration sensing, with a sharp focus on cryptographic transition. The commercial stakes are considerable. According to McKinsey’s Quantum Technology Monitor 2026, onethird of global enterprises now allocate more than US$10 million a year to

THE DIGITAL ECONOMY CAN ONLY THRIVE IF IT IS BUILT ON TRUST, RESILIENCE AND SECURE INNOVATION. TRIXIE LOHMIRMAND, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, inD.

quantum initiatives, with the technology potentially unlocking US$2.7 trillion in economic value over the next decade. “The transition to the post-quantum era is one of the most pivotal shifts our industry faces,” said Dr Al Kuwaiti. “Launching Global Quantum X allows us to bring quantum-safe migration, sovereign cryptographic capability and national readiness testing to a truly global stage.” LohMirmand put the dilemma plainly. “The same computing power that will unlock breakthroughs in medicine, materials and finance will also put today’s encryption at risk, which is why quantum and cybersecurity can no longer be dealt with separately.” Sovereignty, infrastructure and people Digital sovereignty threaded through the programme. The invitation-only Global Leadership Roundtable, ‘The AI Sovereignty Imperative: Defending the US$28 Trillion Digital Economy’, brought Dr Al Kuwaiti together with Subra Kumaraswamy, SVP and CISO of

Trixie LohMirmand, Executive Vice President, inD.

OCTOBER 2026

Visa; Christophe Blassiau, SVP, Global CISO and CPSO of Schneider Electric; Alex Attumalil, Global CISO of Under Armour; and researcher and former hacker Solomon Gilbert. On the Critical Infrastructure Stage, Major General Vasileios Chatzidakis of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff and Lt. Col. Saeed M. AlShebli of the UAE Ministry of Interior offered a pragmatic conclusion, agreeing that sovereignty does not demand complete technological independence but does depend on regional cooperation and public-private partnership. Operational technology received equally hard-headed treatment. Khaled Al-Taneji, Head of Cybersecurity at ENOC Group, urged organisations to judge

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cyber risk by its business, cyber-physical and safety consequences rather than as an IT-versus-OT problem, and to retain the ability to fall back on manual or degraded operations during an incident. A two-hour OT integrity tabletop led by Captain John Ballentine and Thomas Plank then put delegates under pressure to assess compromised systems and make live decisions. People remained the common denominator. On the Dark Stage, teenage Indian security specialists Bandana Kaur and Ryen Agil challenged assumptions about age and expertise in a session titled ‘Too Young to Hack? Think Again’, while live ethical-hacking and OSINT demonstrations, the Dubai Cyber Challenge and GISEC Decode gave the

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talent conversation a practical edge. Aysha Ahmed BinHaji, Cybersecurity Advisor at Bahrain’s National Cyber Security Center, made the case for diverse expertise and continuous testing. “We don’t focus on tasks. We focus on mission,” she said. The road to 2027 GISEC Global 2026 did not resolve the industry’s hardest questions, nor did it try to. Its achievement was to place them in the same room and on the same timeline. AI-enabled fraud, quantum-vulnerable encryption, sovereign capability and a talent pipeline still under construction are no longer separate agendas to be tackled in sequence; each now shapes the others.

CISOs and policymakers across the region left with consistent takeaways. Begin cryptographic inventory and quantum-safe migration now, not when Q-Day arrives. Treat recovery and trust validation as seriously as prevention. Keep human judgement in the loop as automation accelerates. Build sovereignty through partnership rather than isolation. Aligned with the Dubai Cyber Security Strategy, the Dubai Economic Agenda D33, the Digital Economy Strategy and We the UAE 2031, the event also reaffirmed Dubai’s ambition to be the place where those conversations happen. With GQX joining GISEC next May, the region’s post-quantum conversation now has a firm date in the diary.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ EVAD

EVAD STRENGTHENS CYBER RESILIENCE THROUGH INDUSTRY COLLABORATION ABDULLAH A. QAISI, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF EVAD, DISCUSSES AI-DRIVEN THREATS, EMERGING SECURITY TECHNOLOGIES AND THE NEED FOR CLOSER COLLABORATION ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST’S CYBERSECURITY ECOSYSTEM

rtificial intelligence is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, creating new risks while increasing the need for closer collaboration across the technology ecosystem. Abdullah A. Qaisi, Chief Executive Officer of EVAD, discussed with Security Advisor Middle East the company’s participation at GISEC Global 2026, its expanding security portfolio and the importance of partnerships among governments, enterprises, vendors and distributors in strengthening regional cyber resilience.

a strong environment for meaningful industry engagement.

Interview excerpts

Which emerging cybersecurity threats and trends will have the greatest impact on enterprises across the region in 2026 and beyond? Artificial intelligence will have the most significant impact on the cybersecurity landscape. AI is transforming IT infrastructure and business operations, but it is also changing the nature and sophistication of cyber threats. Security measures must evolve at the same pace, supported by closer collaboration among vendors, distributors and partners to protect enterprise networks, infrastructure and data.

How does your organisation’s presence at GISEC Global 2026 align with your broader cybersecurity strategy for the Middle East? EVAD’s participation at GISEC Global 2026 supports our commitment to strengthening collaboration across the regional cybersecurity ecosystem. The event enables us to engage directly with vendors, partners, customers and government stakeholders while presenting technologies that address evolving security requirements. The move to Expo City Dubai has also created

What innovative technologies or solutions did your company showcase at GISEC Global 2026, particularly around AI-driven security? EVAD is showcasing EfficientIP’s DNS security and DDI capabilities, alongside solutions from several vendors added to our portfolio since the previous edition of GISEC Global. These technologies address API security, AI security, secure file sharing and data visibility, helping organisations protect critical systems and information across increasingly complex digital environments.

OCTOBER 2026

How is your company working with governments and enterprises to strengthen cyber resilience across critical sectors? EVAD works closely with government entities, compliance bodies, technology vendors, partners and enterprises to strengthen security controls. Cybersecurity requirements must continually adapt to emerging threats, which makes collaboration across the industry essential. We also engage with other market participants, including competitors, to support stronger standards, controls and cyber resilience across the wider ecosystem. What is your message to the global cybersecurity community at GISEC Global 2026, and how do you see the cybersecurity landscape evolving beyond 2026? The global cybersecurity community must approach the future with a spirit of partnership and shared responsibility. Protecting governments, enterprises and customers requires stakeholders to exchange knowledge, collaborate more closely and strengthen the broader security ecosystem. Beyond 2026, cooperation will become even more important as AI-driven threats evolve and digital environments grow increasingly interconnected.

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Abdullah A. Qaisi, Chief Executive Officer, EVAD.

CYBERSECURITY REQUIREMENTS MUST CONTINUALLY ADAPT TO EMERGING THREATS, WHICH MAKES COLLABORATION ACROSS THE INDUSTRY ESSENTIAL. www.tahawultech.com

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ OPSWAT

OPSWAT STRENGTHENS CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE DEFENCE AGAINST AIDRIVEN THREATS JAMES NEILSON, GLOBAL HEAD OF SALES, OPSWAT, EXPLAINS WHY RISING NATION-STATE THREATS AND AI-POWERED ATTACKS ARE PUSHING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ORGANISATIONS TOWARDS A PROTECTION-FIRST CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY FOCUSED ON STRONGER PERIMETER DEFENCE AND DEEPER FILE INSPECTION.

ritical infrastructure organisations are confronting a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape as nationstate actors, AI-powered attacks and increasingly sophisticated intrusion techniques raise the stakes for cybersecurity teams. At GISEC Global 2026, OPSWAT highlighted the need to strengthen prevention and protection alongside traditional detection and response capabilities. The company advocated deeper inspection of files and data entering enterprise environments, particularly across defence, energy, nuclear and other critical infrastructure sectors.

In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, James Neilson, Global Head of Sales at OPSWAT, discussed the evolution of nation-state cyber threats, the growing impact of AI on attackers and defenders, and why organisations must strengthen perimeter security through a protection-first approach. Interview excerpts How is the threat landscape for critical infrastructure evolving? The world is becoming increasingly volatile, and that has significant implications for critical infrastructure protection. We have seen threats evolve from cyber hacktivism focused on isolated disruption towards a much more

ORGANISATIONS THAT NEED TO REMAIN HIGHLY CONNECTED HAVE OFTEN RELIED HEAVILY ON DETECTION AND RESPONSE, SUPPORTED BY LARGE SECURITY OPERATIONS TEAMS. 24

OCTOBER 2026

persistent and sophisticated approach involving nation-state-sponsored actors. Organisations responsible for critical infrastructure know they are under attack. What concerns CISOs most is not necessarily the attacks already being detected, but whether sophisticated threat actors are quietly compromising environments and laying the groundwork for attacks that could be triggered during a critical event. The concern is increasingly about whether an environment has already been compromised and whether that access could be activated when geopolitical or operational circumstances make the impact significantly greater. Why do organisations need to rethink their approach to cyber protection? The NIST Cybersecurity Framework — identify, protect, detect, respond and recover — has been around for some time. However, I believe the protection element has not always received the depth of attention required. I often use a tennis analogy. I know the rules of tennis and can move around

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a tennis court, but if you put me against Rafael Nadal, I am unlikely to return many shots. The difference is the level of quality, preparation and execution. Cybersecurity protection requires that same level of depth and precision. Some organisations in defence, intelligence and air-gapped critical infrastructure environments, including nuclear facilities, understand this extremely well. However, organisations that need to remain highly connected have often relied heavily on detection and response, supported by large security operations teams. Protection at the perimeter cannot simply depend on one or two malware engines or a firewall. That approach is no longer sufficient, particularly as AI-powered threats become more sophisticated. OPSWAT advocates strengthening protection by inspecting files and data thoroughly as they enter an organisation. The objective is to stop threats at the perimeter rather than relying primarily on the SOC team as the final line of defence. How is AI changing the balance between cyberattack and defence? AI is becoming important on both sides of cybersecurity. OPSWAT uses its own AI technology alongside other advanced technologies within its protection capabilities to analyse and scan files. However, AI-based file scanning alone is not the complete answer. It can provide valuable indicators and identify malware, but organisations still need multiple layers of protection. AI is also helping organisations automate and improve detection and response, which is essential. At the same time, attackers can use AI to discover vulnerabilities and zero-days faster, weaponise them at machine speed and launch increasingly sophisticated attacks. Detection and response alone will therefore not be enough. Organisations need to strengthen perimeter defence, improve protection and inspect files

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James Neilson, Global Head of Sales, OPSWAT.

comprehensively as they enter the environment. Are critical infrastructure organisations prepared for increasingly sophisticated cyber threats? I have a great deal of confidence in many of the organisations responsible for critical infrastructure. They employ highly trained, well-funded cybersecurity professionals who understand the seriousness of the threat landscape. Around 40% of OPSWAT’s customer base comes from defence and intelligence organisations, while approximately 30% comes from traditional operational technology environments such as nuclear and

energy facilities. Another 30% includes highly connected environments such as financial institutions and other enterprises. Across sophisticated organisations, we are seeing greater recognition of the need to inspect files more thoroughly as they enter the environment and strengthen perimeter defence through a protection-first approach. The challenge becomes greater among organisations with smaller budgets and cybersecurity teams. Some still operate with the assumption that a firewall and a couple of malware engines provide sufficient protection. In the age of AIdriven cyber threats, that approach will increasingly be inadequate.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ COHESITY

AGENTIC AI DEMANDS NEW APPROACH TO CYBER RECOVERY, SAYS COHESITY OFFICIAL JOHNNY KARAM, MANAGING DIRECTOR AND VICE PRESIDENT AT COHESITY, SPOKE TO SECURITY ADVISOR MIDDLE EAST ABOUT HOW AGENTIC AI IS EXPANDING ENTERPRISE ATTACK SURFACES AND WHY ORGANISATIONS MUST AUTOMATE THE RECOVERY OF CRITICAL DATA, APPLICATIONS AND DEPENDENCIES.

I adoption is reshaping enterprise risk as organisations move beyond workplace productivity tools and embed autonomous agents into businesscritical workflows. Cohesity research indicates that 73% of UAE respondents experienced a major cyberattack, up from 59% the previous year, highlighting the growing pressure on organisations to strengthen both protection and recovery capabilities. Johnny Karam, Managing Director and Vice-President at Cohesity, discusses why recovery strategies must cover applications and their dependencies, not only data. He also explains the importance of identifying critical operations, securing the information accessible to AI agents and using automation to respond to attacks at machine speed. Interview excerpts What are the major changes you are seeing in the regional business landscape with the acceleration of Agentic AI cyber risk? Cyberattacks are increasing in both frequency and complexity. Our

OCTOBER 2026

recent survey found that 73% of UAE respondents had experienced a major cyberattack, compared with 59% in the previous year. AI is contributing to this growth because it can be used by both defenders and attackers. Organisations are also integrating agentic AI into business workflows rather than using AI solely as an employee productivity tool. AI agents often require access to critical enterprise data and systems, which expands the attack surface and creates new protection and recovery requirements. What are the best practices your customers are taking to be prepared? Organisations must first define their minimum viable company or minimum viable organisation. This means identifying the critical applications, data and services required to maintain essential operations following a cyberattack. Recovery plans should extend beyond restoring data. Businesses must also recover applications and their dependencies in the correct sequence. Cohesity is helping customers automate this process through an agentic AI approach, allowing critical operations to be restored quickly through a tested and

repeatable recovery plan. Our research found that 91% of UAE respondents relied on linear recovery processes, with each step completed sequentially. Many organisations discovered during an attack that workarounds were necessary. Some restored their data but were unable to recover their applications or resume business operations. As organisations increasingly implement AI into business-critical workloads with sensitive and production data, what key changes should they make to their security posture? Organisations should begin by identifying the data sources accessible to AI agents and ensuring that this information is fully protected. If an agent accidentally deletes, modifies or corrupts data, the business must know what was affected and be able to restore it quickly. Security teams also need clear visibility into data-related risks and the organisation’s overall security posture. Attacks operating at machine speed require defences capable of responding at the same pace. AI-powered intelligence, protection and automated recovery will therefore become essential as agentic AI becomes more deeply embedded in enterprise workflows.

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Johnny Karam, Managing Director and Vice President, Cohesity.

AI AGENTS OFTEN REQUIRE ACCESS TO CRITICAL ENTERPRISE DATA AND SYSTEMS, WHICH EXPANDS THE ATTACK SURFACE AND CREATES NEW PROTECTION AND RECOVERY REQUIREMENTS.

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OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ SECLORE

Dr. Vishal Gauri, CEO, Seclore.

ORGANISATIONS MUST STRENGTHEN VISIBILITY AND CONTROL AROUND SENSITIVE INFORMATION WHILE ENABLING RESPONSIBLE AI ADOPTION.

OCTOBER 2026

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AI DEMANDS SMARTER CONTROLS AROUND ENTERPRISE DATA DR. VISHAL GAURI DISCUSSES SECLORE ARMOR, DATA SECURITY INTELLIGENCE AND PERSISTENT PROTECTION FOR SENSITIVE ENTERPRISE INFORMATION.

I adoption is reshaping how enterprises create, consume and protect information, placing greater pressure on CISOs to balance innovation with security, compliance and governance. This shift requires organisations to move beyond perimeter-based controls and place data at the centre of their security strategies. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East at GISEC Global 2026, Dr. Vishal Gauri, CEO, Seclore, discusses Seclore ARMOR, the growing importance of Data Security Intelligence and how persistent protection can help enterprises retain control over sensitive information wherever it travels. Interview excerpts What is Seclore showcasing at GISEC Global 2026, and how does it address evolving data security priorities? Seclore is showcasing Seclore ARMOR, a unified, full-stack platform designed to support enterprise data security from discovery through to persistent protection. The platform enables organisations to understand the content, context and intended use of their information, classify sensitive and confidential data, and maintain control over it wherever it travels.Persistent

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protection allows enterprises to determine who can access information, how it can be used and how long access should remain available. Bringing these capabilities together within one platform helps organisations address evolving security, compliance and governance requirements more effectively. How are growing security and compliance pressures changing the way enterprises protect sensitive data? Enterprise data consumption and creation have changed significantly over the past two years, driven largely by the automation and efficiency offered by AI. CISOs across the Middle East, North America and Asia are under pressure to adopt AI, improve operational efficiency and automate processes while remaining compliant and protecting sensitive information.AI applications consume and generate information at far greater scale, changing the volume of data moving across the enterprise and the way it is used. Organisations must therefore strengthen visibility and control around sensitive information while enabling responsible AI adoption. Why should Data Security Intelligence be viewed as an operating model rather than another security product category? With AI entering the enterprise, data

security must become more intelligent. Deterministic rules and policies alone are no longer sufficient to protect information. Organisations need to understand what the data contains, why it was created and how it is being used across the enterprise.This requires intelligence to be embedded directly into security controls. Data Security Intelligence is therefore not simply another product category. It represents the way data security must operate to meet the emerging requirements of an AI-ready enterprise. How will AI transform the way enterprises discover, govern and protect sensitive information? Enterprise adoption of AI represents one of the most significant changes the security industry has experienced in recent years. Security strategies must consequently shift their focus from the actions being performed and the attack surfaces being defended to the asset that ultimately requires protection: data. Protecting information at its source will become increasingly important as AI enters more business processes and applications. Enterprises must place data at the centre of their security strategies, ensuring sensitive information remains protected regardless of where it travels, who accesses it or how it is used.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ FVC

K. S. Parag, Managing Director, FVC.

FVC STRENGTHENS CYBER RESILIENCE WITH AI-DRIVEN SECURITY STRATEGY K. S. PARAG, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF FVC, OUTLINES HOW THE COMPANY IS HELPING PARTNERS DELIVER COST-EFFECTIVE CYBERSECURITY, ASSET INTELLIGENCE, PATCH MANAGEMENT AND AI APPLICATION TESTING CAPABILITIES TO REGIONAL ENTERPRISES. 30

OCTOBER 2026

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ybersecurity strategies across the Middle East are being reshaped by ransomware, AI-enabled attacks and the rapid adoption of generative and agentic AI applications. Organisations must protect expanding digital environments while managing security complexity, operational requirements and mounting cost pressures. During GISEC Global 2026, K. S. Parag, Managing Director of FVC, discussed with Security Advisor Middle East the company’s approach to strengthening regional cyber resilience through its partner ecosystem. Parag also highlighted FVC’s capabilities across patch management, application security, asset intelligence and AI application testing, alongside the importance of delivering measurable protection without placing excessive pressure on enterprise budgets. Interview excerpts How does your organisation’s presence at GISEC Global 2026 align with your broader cybersecurity strategy for the Middle East? FVC’s presence at GISEC Global 2026 reflects two core priorities. The first is strengthening our cybersecurity and AI resilience portfolio for regional partners and customers. The second is demonstrating how our technical capabilities and partner ecosystem can help organisations address evolving security requirements more effectively.

CYBERSECURITY AND AI RESILIENCE WILL REMAIN ESSENTIAL PRIORITIES FOR ORGANISATIONS BEYOND 2026. www.tahawultech.com

GISEC provides an important platform for us to engage with the cybersecurity community, understand emerging customer priorities and present solutions that combine stronger protection with operational and cost efficiencies. Which emerging cybersecurity threats and trends will have the greatest impact on enterprises across the region in 2026 and beyond? Ransomware, AI-enabled attacks and the growing risks associated with generative AI applications will have a significant impact on enterprises. Expanding digital environments and the adoption of AI are creating new assets, identities and attack surfaces that organisations must understand and protect. Enterprises also face the challenge of managing multiple security technologies across areas such as threat intelligence, governance, risk and compliance, privileged access management, network detection and response, and endpoint detection and response. Security leaders must ensure these tools work together efficiently and deliver measurable value without creating excessive complexity or cost. What innovative technologies or solutions is your company showcasing at GISEC Global 2026, particularly around AI-driven security? FVC is showcasing capabilities across patch management, application security, asset intelligence and AI application testing. Our partnership with HCLSoftware brings technologies such as BigFix and AppScan to help organisations strengthen patch management and application security. We are also highlighting asset management and intelligence capabilities that enable enterprises to discover, understand, protect and use their technology assets more effectively. Another important focus is penetration testing for generative AI, large language model and agentic AI applications.

Such capabilities help organisations identify vulnerabilities before deploying AI systems across critical enterprise workflows. How is your company working with governments and enterprises to strengthen cyber resilience across critical sectors? FVC works through its partner ecosystem to help organisations identify security gaps, select appropriate technologies and implement solutions aligned with operational and budgetary requirements. Customer education remains central to this approach, particularly as organisations seek to combine cybersecurity with AI to improve resilience. Our technical and presales teams support partners and customers through proofs of concept, demonstrations and professional services. This structure enables organisations to evaluate technologies in their own environments and build cybersecurity programmes that address specific risks while optimising implementation costs. What is your message to the global cybersecurity community at GISEC Global 2026, and how do you see the cybersecurity landscape evolving beyond 2026? Cybersecurity and AI resilience will remain essential priorities for organisations beyond 2026. Ransomware, generative AI attacks and increasingly sophisticated threat activity will continue to drive demand for stronger protection. The industry must focus on delivering practical security outcomes rather than simply adding more tools. Vendors, distributors and channel partners need to work together to educate customers, address genuine business risks and provide solutions that balance resilience with affordability. FVC aims to support this objective by combining relevant technologies, technical expertise and a strong partner ecosystem.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ NOZOMI NETWORKS

NOZOMI NETWORKS ADVANCES AI-DRIVEN CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY BACHIR MOUSSA, VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES FOR EMEA SOUTH AT NOZOMI NETWORKS, EXPLAINS WHY UNIFIED VISIBILITY ACROSS IT, OT AND IOT IS ESSENTIAL FOR CONTINUOUS RISK MANAGEMENT AND RAPID THREAT RESPONSE.

Bachir Moussa, Vice President of Sales for EMEA South, Nozomi Networks.

OCTOBER 2026

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ritical infrastructure organisations across the Middle East face an expanding cyberphysical attack surface as IT, operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) environments become increasingly connected. Greater integration supports digital transformation and smart infrastructure projects, but also exposes legacy systems and operational networks to advanced, AI-enabled threats. Bachir Moussa, Vice President of Sales for EMEA South at Nozomi Networks, discusses the shift from conventional incident response to continuous cyber risk management with Security Advisor Middle East. Mousa explains why comprehensive visibility is essential, how AI can strengthen anomaly detection and risk prioritisation, and what organisations must do to protect connected operational environments from disruption.

suspicious activity in real time. Accurate intelligence and contextual information also give incident response teams the time and insight needed to contain threats before disruption occurs.

Interview excerpts

Why do visibility gaps remain a major security risk across OT and IoT environments? Many OT environments were traditionally air-gapped from corporate IT networks and continue to rely on legacy technologies and protocols that can be difficult to secure. Growing IT and OT convergence has increased connectivity and flexibility, but it has also expanded the attack surface. Organisations need a unified strategy that brings together IT and OT technologies, people, processes and functions. Modernising operational environments allows security solutions to deliver consistent visibility, threat detection and response across both domains. Without this visibility, organisations cannot identify exposed assets, detect anomalies or understand the risks affecting critical operations.

How are critical infrastructure organisations shifting from incident response to continuous cyber risk management? Incident response alone is no longer sufficient to protect organisations from advanced and AI-enabled attacks. Critical infrastructure operators need a holistic programme that continuously identifies risk, detects threats and supports a rapid, informed response. This approach requires visibility across IT, operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) environments. Security teams must understand what is moving across connected networks and detect

How is the cyber-physical threat landscape evolving across the Middle East? The Middle East is experiencing significant development across smart cities, digital transformation and connected infrastructure. This rapid innovation is creating new opportunities, but it is also attracting threat actors seeking to disrupt the systems being built across the region. Attackers are increasingly using AI-enhanced techniques to target connected IT, OT and IoT environments. Regional organisations must therefore strengthen security as new projects and

THIS VISIBILITY SHOULD EXTEND ACROSS THE ENTIRE ORGANISATION RATHER THAN REMAIN LIMITED TO ONE BUSINESS UNIT OR TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT. www.tahawultech.com

infrastructure come online. Government cybersecurity councils in the UAE and other Middle Eastern markets also play an important role in establishing security requirements, raising awareness and helping organisations prepare for emerging threats. What AI-driven security, threat intelligence and risk prioritisation capabilities will Nozomi Networks showcase at GISEC Global 2026? Nozomi Networks has incorporated AI and machine learning into its platform from the outset. These capabilities support asset visibility, anomaly detection and the correlation of threats and risks across connected environments. GISEC Global 2026 provides an opportunity for us to demonstrate how these capabilities continue to evolve. This includes Vantage IQ, which allows different personas within an organisation to use embedded AI to understand security conditions and respond quickly when threats emerge. The platform helps customers and partners translate extensive operational data into actionable security insights. How can organisations secure critical infrastructure as connectivity across operational environments continues to increase? The starting point must be comprehensive visibility because organisations cannot protect assets they cannot see. This visibility should extend across the entire organisation rather than remain limited to one business unit or technology environment. Once this foundation is established, AI-enabled tools can identify anomalies, evaluate organisational risk and break that risk down by user, asset or site. Solutions such as those provided by Nozomi Networks can combine asset visibility, threat detection and risk intelligence, enabling security teams to apply measured controls quickly and reduce the likelihood of operational disruption.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ CLOUDSEK

AI WEAPONISATION DRIVES SURGE IN MIDDLE EAST CYBERATTACKS GURDIP SINGH, VP SALES & PARTNERSHIPS, EMEA & APAC, CLOUDSEK, DISCUSSES RISING THREATS TO CRITICAL SECTORS, THIRD-PARTY EXPOSURE AND THE NEED FOR CONTINUOUS MONITORING OF AI ATTACK SURFACES.

yber threats across the Middle East are intensifying as state-sponsored groups, ideologically motivated actors and cybercriminals target critical sectors with increasingly coordinated campaigns. AI weaponisation, third-party exposure and vulnerabilities across interconnected IT and operational technology environments are adding new layers of risk for regional organisations. Gurdip Singh, VP Sales & Partnerships, EMEA & APAC, CloudSEK, spoke to Security Advisor Middle East, about the company’s Middle East Threat Exposure Report, the growing AI attack surface and the importance of continuous third-party monitoring. Singh also outlines lessons from securing the real estate and aviation sectors and CloudSEK’s partner-led regional growth strategy. Interview excerpts What does CloudSEK’s Middle East Threat Exposure Report reveal about the region’s evolving cyber-risk landscape between April 2025 and August 2026? CloudSEK’s quarterly Middle East Threat Exposure Report tracks cyberattack trends and the challenges facing

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organisations across the region. Recent findings point to an unprecedented surge in coordinated attacks across the UAE and other Middle Eastern markets. Statesponsored groups, ideologically motivated actors and underground cybercriminals are targeting critical sectors to disrupt operations and potentially damage national economies. Around 1,000 attacks were recorded during the latest quarter covered, with banking, financial services and insurance, telecommunications and government among the most targeted sectors. AI weaponisation has also emerged as a major concern, enabling threat actors to conduct increasingly targeted and coordinated campaigns. Which threat groups are actively targeting organisations across the Middle East and Africa, and how have their tactics evolved? CloudSEK has observed activity involving state-sponsored groups such as APT33, APT34, MuddyWater and OilRig, alongside ideologically motivated actors and cybercriminal groups. Critical infrastructure and strategically important industries remain key targets. Attack methods now extend across distributed denial-of-service campaigns, hacking, cybercrime and targeted disruption. Threat actors are also using AI to

improve reconnaissance, automate elements of their operations and conduct more coordinated attacks against sectors such as government, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, real estate and critical infrastructure. How does CloudSEK’s AIVigil help enterprises identify and manage AIrelated attack-surface risks? AI adoption is accelerating rapidly, but many organisations still lack formal governance policies for AI assets and associated cyber risks. This creates an attack surface that often remains unknown or poorly monitored. CloudSEK’s AIVigil monitors an organisation’s external AI attack surface, including large language models, AI tools, source-code libraries, databases and vector databases. The platform provides visibility into potential exposures across these environments, helping enterprises identify risks early and stay ahead of threat actors seeking to exploit AI infrastructure. Why has third-party risk become a boardlevel compliance priority, and how does CloudSEK’s SVigil support emerging operational resilience requirements? Third-party risk management has moved beyond a compliance exercise. Organisations inherit elements of a

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Gurdip Singh, VP Sales & Partnerships, EMEA & APAC, CloudSEK.

vendor’s attack surface and vulnerabilities when that vendor is connected to their systems or entrusted with sensitive data. Exposure can also originate from fourthparty providers operating deeper within the supply chain. Boards are increasingly accountable to investors and regulators for managing these risks. CloudSEK’s SVigil enables organisations to continuously monitor third- and fourth-party vendors for cyber vulnerabilities, deep and dark web exposure, and wider digital risks. This visibility helps security teams identify weaknesses before threat actors can exploit them and strengthens operational resilience across the supply chain. What has CloudSEK learned from securing the Middle East’s real estate and aviation sectors? Real estate and aviation organisations have become high-value targets because they serve large customer bases, manage sensitive personally identifiable

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information and operate business-critical systems. CloudSEK’s work with major real estate companies in the UAE has revealed persistent attempts to harvest investor and customer data through targeted campaigns. Airports, airlines and aviation regulators face similar risks across interconnected IT and operational technology environments. Vulnerabilities within applications and operational systems can expose millions of passengers and disrupt essential services. These sectors must therefore adopt a proactive security approach based on continuous monitoring

THIRD-PARTY RISK MANAGEMENT HAS MOVED BEYOND A COMPLIANCE EXERCISE.

and early threat detection. What does CloudSEK’s regional growth roadmap involve across local support, product development and partner engagement? CloudSEK’s regional strategy combines local investment with a partner-led approach. The company has established an on-ground team spanning customer success, partner management and technical support to assist customers throughout their cybersecurity journey. Partners play a central role in its growth model through a structured programme focused on enablement, certification, education and incentives. CloudSEK also works with the Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, which supports introductions to government and enterprise customers. Continued investment in regional capabilities and close partner collaboration will remain central to the company’s expansion.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ QBS SOFTWARE

STRENGTHENING CYBER RESILIENCE IN AN AI-DRIVEN WORLD MO MOBASSERI, CEO OF QBS SOFTWARE META & EURASIA, DISCUSSES EVOLVING CYBER THREATS, AI SECURITY AND QBS SOFTWARE’S STRATEGY FOR STRENGTHENING CYBER RESILIENCE ACROSS REGIONAL ENTERPRISES.

I is rapidly reshaping both cyber threats and defence strategies; enterprises are under growing pressure to secure data, identities and emerging AI environments. QBS Software is highlighting technologies designed to address evolving cybersecurity requirements while strengthening its vendor and partner ecosystem across META and Eurasia at GISEC Global 2026. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Mo Mobasseri, CEO of QBS Software META & Eurasia, discusses QBS Software’s cybersecurity strategy, emerging AI-related risks, its expanding technology portfolio, and the importance of education, simulation, and partner-led implementation in building long-term cyber resilience. Interview excerpts How would you describe the sentiment on the first day of GISEC Global 2026, and what is QBS showcasing at the event? The new venue has been a positive experience. We have great memories of Dubai World Trade Centre and will certainly miss it, but the new venue

OCTOBER 2026

brings several advantages. One of the things I particularly like is that the major industry players are gathered together, while the event itself remains highly focused on cybersecurity. This gives us access to a broader and more relevant visitor base. QBS works with a large portfolio of technology publishers and vendors across EMEA, with some relationships extending globally. At GISEC Global, we are showcasing solutions from several of our key technology vendors, including Exor Lab, Portnox, Vanta, and Fortra, among others. Our objective is to address the 18 CIS Controls through a comprehensive portfolio of technologies, helping customers strengthen their cybersecurity posture across multiple areas. How does QBS’s presence at GISEC Global align with its broader cybersecurity strategy for the region? QBS has two major areas of focus. One is our software delivery platform, which is a unique part of our business and has been developed over many years. Today, we have almost 12,000 publishers on the platform. Cybersecurity is also one of the strongest areas within the wider

group. Globally, we participate in major cybersecurity events, including Infosecurity Europe in London, IT-SA in Germany, GISEC Global in the UAE, and Black Hat in Saudi Arabia. Our strategy is to maintain a strong presence at these industry platforms and represent the technologies within our portfolio. Our role is to ensure that our partners have access to strong technologies while helping our vendors establish the right market presence. What emerging cybersecurity threats or trends do you believe will have the greatest impact on enterprises in the Middle East and beyond? We are seeing two major areas of concern. The first is the traditional challenge of data security. Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly professional and are using more sophisticated technologies. Data security therefore continues to be a major challenge for organisations across the region because data is one of their most valuable assets. The second major area is AI. AI capabilities are becoming stronger every day, creating tremendous opportunities but also introducing new security challenges. Organisations need greater

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visibility into how AI is being used, how much they are spending on it, and what security risks may emerge from its adoption. Our approach is to bring these two areas together by helping customers and partners strengthen traditional data security while also addressing the broader security implications associated with AI. What innovative technologies or solutions is QBS showcasing at GISEC Global 2026? We have a global agreement with AWS, which we are preparing to extend into the Middle East as the necessary arrangements are finalised. This is particularly interesting because many of our technology vendors will be available through the AWS platform, making it easier for partners and customers to access and acquire the solutions they require. We are also showcasing several emerging technologies at GISEC Global, including AI-based email security, security awareness through gamification, and advanced security operations technologies. Another important focus is AI security. Organisations increasingly need to understand how to secure AI agents and ensure these systems do not introduce additional risks into their environments. How is QBS collaborating with governments and enterprises to strengthen cyber resilience across key economic sectors? Our approach begins with education. To support government entities and organisations, we first help people understand the cybersecurity challenges

Mo Mobasseri, CEO, QBS Software META & Eurasia.

they face. For several years, we have run initiatives such as cyber escape rooms, including engagements with the UAE Cyber Security Council and other organisations. The second element involves workshops and practical exercises for people involved in business, technology management and implementation. These simulations help participants understand what can happen during a real-world cyberattack and what the potential consequences may be. The third element is technology. We do not simply provide products. We work to ensure that technologies are properly designed for the customer’s environment, implemented effectively through our partners and supported over the long term.

ORGANISATIONS NEED GREATER VISIBILITY INTO HOW AI IS BEING USED, HOW MUCH THEY ARE SPENDING ON IT, AND WHAT SECURITY RISKS MAY EMERGE FROM ITS ADOPTION. www.tahawultech.com

In some cases, resident engineers are also provided through our partners to support customer environments and help organisations maintain stronger cybersecurity capabilities over time. What message would you share with the global information security community about QBS’s vision for cybersecurity in 2026 and beyond? First, I would encourage the global cybersecurity community to experience GISEC Global and the opportunities within this region. It is an exciting market with considerable innovation taking place. AI also requires significantly greater attention. We are already seeing governments, including the United States and other countries, developing legislation and frameworks around AI. AI can help organisations improve productivity, performance and security, but people also need to understand how to use it responsibly and securely. Looking ahead, organisations will need to focus not only on how AI can help them, but also on how they can protect themselves against the new risks associated with AI.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ SECLORE

SECLORE ADVANCES DATA-CENTRIC SECURITY ACROSS META URAZ FARUKH, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT – META AT SECLORE, DISCUSSES HOW THE COMPANY’S ARMOR PLATFORM HELPS ENTERPRISES PROTECT SENSITIVE INFORMATION, MEET DATA SOVEREIGNTY REQUIREMENTS AND SCALE AI SECURELY.

ISEC Global 2026 brought data sovereignty, AI security and persistent information protection into sharper focus as enterprises across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa accelerated their adoption of cloud and AI technologies. Seclore used the event to demonstrate how its unified ARMOR platform combines Data Security Posture Management, data classification and Enterprise Digital Rights Management to protect sensitive information wherever it travels. Uraz Farukh, Senior Vice President – META, Seclore, spoke to Security Advisor Middle East about the evolving regulatory landscape, cross-border data risks and the company’s expanding regional presence. Farukh also outlined Seclore’s plans to strengthen local operations, accelerate partner engagement and support the development of secure, sovereign digital ecosystems across META. Interview excerpts What did Seclore demonstrate at GISEC Global 2026? Seclore demonstrated how organisations can achieve greater visibility, control,

OCTOBER 2026

and protection over sensitive information through the unified Seclore ARMOR platform. The showcase featured our Data Security Posture Management, data classification, and Enterprise Digital Rights Management capabilities. Visitors had a glimpse of how the technologies work together to protect critical information wherever it travels. We also demonstrated how enterprises can scale their AI initiatives while reducing the risk of intellectual property exposure and maintaining compliance with relevant data protection requirements. What are the biggest data security challenges enterprises across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa are facing as AI and cloud adoption accelerate? Rapid adoption of AI and cloud

ENTERPRISES MUST UNDERSTAND WHICH INFORMATION IS SENSITIVE, WHO CAN ACCESS IT AND HOW IT IS BEING USED.

technologies is changing how organisations create, process, share and store sensitive data. Information now moves across users, applications, cloud platforms and geographical boundaries, making it increasingly difficult for enterprises to maintain visibility and control. AI introduces additional risks because models and applications require access to large volumes of organisational data. Enterprises must understand which information is sensitive, who can access it and how it is being used. Stronger data classification, masking, tokenisation and persistent protection are essential to prevent unauthorised access, intellectual property exposure and cross-border data leakage. Which security, compliance and data sovereignty requirements are having the greatest influence on organisations across META? Data sovereignty and privacy regulations are having a significant influence on organisations across the region. Requirements such as Saudi Arabia’s Essential Cybersecurity Controls and Personal Data Protection Law, Dubai’s data compliance standards and emerging regulations across Africa require organisations to demonstrate

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that sensitive information remains within approved legal and geographical boundaries. Compliance can no longer depend solely on securing networks, devices or storage environments. Protection must remain attached to the data itself, allowing organisations to control who can access information, what authorised users can do with it and whether access can be revoked when circumstances change. How has Seclore’s presence and customer base across the Middle East and Africa developed in recent years? Seclore’s regional journey began with a strong presence in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and has since expanded across the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. Our regional headquarters in Riyadh reflects our long-term commitment to the market and enables us to work closely with customers, partners and government stakeholders. Our customer base now includes leading financial institutions, defence organisations, government entities and major telecommunications operators. Initiatives such as Secure 2030, supported by our expanding partner network, are helping organisations adopt a data-centric approach to security and digital transformation. What priorities will shape Seclore’s regional growth following GISEC Global 2026? Our priorities include accelerating the adoption of Seclore ARMOR, strengthening local operations and

COMPLIANCE CAN NO LONGER DEPEND SOLELY ON SECURING NETWORKS, DEVICES OR STORAGE ENVIRONMENTS. www.tahawultech.com

Uraz Farukh, Senior Vice President – META, Seclore.

expanding our strategic partner ecosystem. Saudi Arabia will remain a major focus as we support the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 ambitions and the growing requirement for secure, sovereign digital infrastructure. Africa also represents an important growth opportunity as data protection regulations and cybersecurity

maturity continue to develop across the continent. We are strengthening relationships with partners in markets including Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Nigeria to provide customers with local expertise and support. Our wider objective is to establish data-centric security as a foundational pillar of digital trust across META.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ SAVIYNT

SECURING NEW ERA OF AI IDENTITIES KAMEL HEUS, VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES-MEA, SAVIYNT, DISCUSSES HOW IDENTITY SECURITY, AI GOVERNANCE, AND REAL-TIME ACCESS CONTROLS ARE HELPING ENTERPRISES SECURELY MANAGE AI AGENTS AND NON-HUMAN IDENTITIES

I adoption is accelerating across the Middle East, bringing a new generation of identities into enterprise environments as AI agents and other non-human identities gain greater autonomy. This shift is placing identity security, governance, and realtime access control at the centre of enterprise cybersecurity strategies. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East at GISEC Global 2026, Kamel Heus, Vice President of Sales-MEA, Saviynt, discusses the company’s Zuma AI Identity Security platform, the growing role of identity as a control plane for AI, the convergence of identity governance and privileged access, and Saviynt’s expanding presence across the Middle East. Interview excerpts What did Saviynt showcase at GISEC Global 2026, and how do these capabilities address the Middle East’s identity security priorities? We are showcasing two key solutions: Zuma, our AI Identity Security platform, and Saviynt Enterprise Identity Cloud. Zuma provides visibility into AI agents, manages their lifecycle, and controls what agents are authorised to do at runtime. Enterprise Identity Cloud brings

OCTOBER 2026

together identity governance, privileged access management, application access governance, identity security and posture management on a unified platform. With AI adoption accelerating across the Middle East, organisations need a different approach to securing AI agents. Unlike human identities, agents are non-deterministic and can take different routes to achieve an objective. Runtime security helps ensure their actions remain aligned with their intended purpose. Why is identity becoming the control plane for secure enterprise AI adoption? Identity is the foundation of modern cybersecurity because it underpins every access decision and digital interaction.

REGULATORY FRAMEWORKS ARE STRENGTHENING CYBERSECURITY DECISION-MAKING AND INCREASING AWARENESS OF IDENTITY SECURITY.

Assigning unique identities to AI agents and linking them to accountable human owners enables organisations to understand who or what is taking an action, enforce appropriate guardrails, and manage agents throughout their lifecycle. This makes identity a critical control plane for secure enterprise AI adoption. How does Zuma support the shift towards AI identity security and realtime authorisation for AI agents and non-human identities? Zuma addresses three critical areas: visibility, governance, and access control. Visibility enables organisations to discover AI agents across their environments, while governance ensures agents are linked to accountable human owners and managed throughout their lifecycle. Runtime access control is particularly important because AI agents are non-deterministic and can take unexpected routes to achieve an objective. For example, an agent without calendar access could retrieve meeting information through another agent with access to emails. Zuma evaluates such actions at runtime to determine whether they align with the agent’s intended purpose, an approach Saviynt calls Intent-Aware Runtime Authorisation (IARA).

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Kamel Heus, Vice President of Sales-MEA, Saviynt.

How is the convergence of identity governance, privileged access and AI governance changing enterprise security strategies? Traditionally, organisations used separate solutions for identity governance and privileged access management. Our unified platform brings together IGA, privileged access management and application access governance, providing granular visibility across applications, including platforms such as SAP. This convergence strengthens visibility,

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governance and accountability across the identity landscape. How are regulatory requirements, data residency expectations and Saviynt’s regional expansion shaping its Middle East growth roadmap? The Middle East is one of the more advanced regions in cybersecurity regulation, with identity and access management central to many requirements in markets such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Regulatory frameworks are strengthening cybersecurity

decision-making and increasing awareness of identity security, while the market is also shifting beyond compliance towards business enablement. Saviynt has offices in Dubai and Riyadh and operates as a channel-first company, working closely with global and local system integrators, partners and distributors. Our focus is on raising awareness around identity security, bridging skills gaps, and helping organisations pursue digital initiatives with confidence that identities and data remain protected.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ COHESITY

COHESITY OUTLINES FIVE-STEP PATH TO FASTER CYBER RECOVERY GREGG PETERSEN, REGIONAL DIRECTOR – MIDDLE EAST AT COHESITY, EXPLAINS WHY ORGANISATIONS NEED A MINIMUM VIABLE COMPANY APPROACH TO RESTORE CRITICAL DATA, APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES WITHIN HOURS FOLLOWING A CYBERATTACK.

yberattacks are increasing in frequency and impact, exposing gaps in traditional recovery strategies. While many organisations believe they have effective cyber resilience plans, prolonged recovery times, data loss and dependence on workaround solutions continue to disrupt business operations. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Gregg Petersen, Regional Director – Middle East at Cohesity, explains why organisations must adopt a Minimum Viable Company approach to recovery. He outlines five essential steps for strengthening cyber resilience, prioritising critical systems and using automation, orchestration and simulation to restore essential operations within hours rather than weeks. Interview excerpts Why do organisations need to rethink traditional cyber recovery and adopt a Minimum Viable Company approach? Cyberattacks have increased significantly, with 73% of organisations experiencing an attack, compared with 56% last year. Although 88% believe they have a cyber resilience plan, 91% admit they would still need workarounds following an attack.

OCTOBER 2026

Traditional recovery approaches are no longer sufficient because restoring operations can take one or two weeks, with some organisations also losing critical data. Businesses cannot afford such prolonged disruption. A Minimum Viable Company approach enables an organisation to identify the essential applications, databases, systems and services required to resume critical operations. The objective is to restore these capabilities within hours rather than weeks, allowing the business to operate while the remaining environment is recovered. What are the five key steps organisations should take to build an effective cyber resilience strategy? The first step is to secure the fundamentals by backing up data and

ORCHESTRATION REMAINS CRITICAL BECAUSE RECOVERY MUST BE PROACTIVE, PREDICTABLE AND REGULARLY TESTED.

ensuring those backups are immutable, locked and fault-tolerant. The second step is to follow the 3-21-1 backup rule, maintaining multiple copies of data across different locations and storage formats, including an offsite or vaulted copy. Recent geopolitical developments have also encouraged some organisations to keep a protected copy outside the country or region. The third step involves strengthening threat detection, data classification and threat-scanning capabilities. Organisations need visibility into their data and environments so they can identify potential compromises and determine which recovery points are safe to use. The fourth step is to define the organisation’s minimum viable operating model. This requires identifying the applications, databases and services that must be restored first to resume essential business functions. The fifth step focuses on orchestration and simulation. Recovery processes should be automated, tested and rehearsed regularly so teams know exactly what to do when an attack occurs. Cyber resilience is a journey, and organisations should assess their current maturity before progressing towards a more proactive recovery model.

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Gregg Petersen, Regional Director - Middle East, Cohesity.

How can organisations identify which systems, data and capabilities need to be restored first after a cyberattack? Prioritisation must take place before an attack. Organisations should classify their data, applications and databases according to their importance to essential operations. They must also understand the dependencies between systems and establish a clear recovery sequence.

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Building a digital jump bag is an important part of this process. It should contain the software licence keys, user credentials, identity services and other critical components required to rebuild the environment. Active Directory and other foundational services should also be recoverable through automated processes rather than manual intervention.

A clearly defined plan allows leadership teams to understand which applications and databases will be restored first, what the minimum viable organisation will look like and how quickly essential services can resume. Orchestration remains critical because recovery must be proactive, predictable and regularly tested.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ VAD TECHNOLOGIES

VAD TECHNOLOGIES STRENGTHENS REGIONAL CYBERSECURITY COLLABORATION MARIO M. VELJOVIC, GENERAL MANAGER OF VAD TECHNOLOGIES, REFLECTS ON GISEC GLOBAL 2026 AND EXPLAINS WHY INDUSTRY SPECIALISATION, CONTINUOUS LEARNING AND LOCALLY FOCUSED TECHNOLOGY EVENTS WILL SHAPE CYBERSECURITY PROGRESS ACROSS THE REGION.

ybersecurity priorities across the region are evolving rapidly as AI adoption, infrastructure demands and emerging threats reshape enterprise strategies. Stronger technology ecosystems, deeper specialisation and closer collaboration between vendors, partners and customers are becoming increasingly important. Mario M. Veljovic, General Manager of VAD Technologies, shares his perspective on GISEC Global 2026 with Security Advisor Middle East on regional market dynamics and the capabilities organisations will need to address future cybersecurity challenges. Interview excerpts How would you assess GISEC Global 2026 on day two, and what are your impressions of the new venue? We are delighted to participate at GISEC Global 2026 alongside our partner Nextcloud. This is the first time VAD Technologies has exhibited at the event with one of its partners, making it an important milestone for us. The new venue has created a more focused environment. Day two has been particularly busy, with more end customers visiting and spending

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meaningful time in discussions. Although the previous venue benefited from its central location, visitors here appear more engaged and willing to explore solutions in greater depth. With AI reshaping cybersecurity, how is VAD Technologies helping customers address evolving security requirements? Cybersecurity has traditionally been a fragmented market, with many vendors addressing specific areas of the security stack. AI is adding further complexity by increasing the need for secure, high-performance infrastructure that can support demanding workloads. VAD Technologies aims to bring more cybersecurity vendors into its ecosystem and help them deploy their solutions across large-scale projects and data centres in the region. Our role is to connect high-performance data centre infrastructure with cybersecurity capabilities, enabling customers to build environments that can support AI securely and effectively. VAD Technologies participates in major technology events across the region. How do you see regional dialogue influencing the global technology community? Major regional events remain important,

but country-level exhibitions, trade shows and community gatherings are becoming increasingly influential. Strong participation across markets such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey demonstrates growing interest in local technology ecosystems. Global platforms bring the industry together, but local context remains essential. Each market has distinct priorities, opportunities and requirements. Events that combine international expertise with local insight can strengthen collaboration, accelerate technology adoption and help emerging markets contribute more actively to the global technology dialogue. What is your message to the regional cybersecurity community for the remainder of 2026 and the year ahead? Cybersecurity professionals must remain open to learning because new technologies and threats continue to emerge rapidly. Even after more than 30 years in the technology industry, I continue to learn every day.My advice is to stay focused. Once you identify an opportunity, commit to it, build deep expertise and maintain the stamina required to succeed. Avoid trying to cover every area. Specialisation, continuous learning and strong ecosystem collaboration will be vital for addressing cybersecurity challenges in 2027 and beyond.

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Mario M. Veljovic, General Manager, VAD Technologies.

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CYBERSECURITY PROFESSIONALS MUST REMAIN OPEN TO LEARNING BECAUSE NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THREATS CONTINUE TO EMERGE RAPIDLY.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ THALES

Sébastien Pavie, Vice President of Sales – SEMEA, Thales.

AI-RELATED RISKS AND THE GROWING FOCUS ON POST-QUANTUM SECURITY REQUIRE ORGANISATIONS TO REVIEW WHETHER THEIR CURRENT CONTROLS REMAIN FIT FOR PURPOSE. 46

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THALES STRENGTHENS DATA PROTECTION AMID AI AND QUANTUM RISKS SÉBASTIEN PAVIE, VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES – SEMEA AT THALES, EXAMINES THE GROWING INFLUENCE OF AI ON CYBER THREATS AND EXPLAINS WHY DATA-CENTRIC AND QUANTUMSAFE SECURITY HAVE BECOME ENTERPRISE PRIORITIES.

I adoption, expanding data volumes and the emerging threat posed by quantum computing are prompting enterprises to reassess their cybersecurity strategies. Growing demand for platform consolidation is also encouraging organisations to integrate data security, application security and identity and access management capabilities. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East at GISEC Global 2026, Sébastien Pavie, Vice President of Sales – SEMEA at Thales, discusses the company’s latest data protection and quantum-safe security developments. He also examines the dual role of AI in strengthening cyber defence and enabling more sophisticated attacks, highlighting the importance of protecting sensitive data throughout its lifecycle.

platform for Thales to connect with customers and partners, discuss evolving security priorities and present our latest product developments.

Interview excerpts

What did Thales demonstrate at GISEC Global 2026? Thales showcased capabilities across data security, application security, and identity and access management. Customers increasingly want to consolidate products and vendors, so we continue to combine complementary solutions within integrated platforms. One of our latest developments brings data protection capabilities together within a single platform, covering the discovery, visibility, protection and control of sensitive information. We also introduced a next-generation, quantumready hardware security module designed to help organisations prepare for the potential impact of quantum computing on current encryption methods.

How did you find GISEC Global 2026 compared with previous editions? The new venue at Expo City Dubai brought fresh energy to GISEC Global 2026. The event was extremely busy, which reflected strong engagement from the cybersecurity community. GISEC continues to provide an important

What should guide enterprises when selecting AI-powered cybersecurity technologies? Enterprises should first recognise AI’s dual role in cybersecurity. Attackers can use AI to increase the scale and sophistication of threats, while defenders can apply the technology to strengthen

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detection, protection and response. AI adoption also creates and processes significantly larger volumes of data, making data-centric security more important than ever. Organisations should therefore assess whether a security technology can protect sensitive data throughout its lifecycle, support AI use cases and defend against AI-enhanced threats. Regulatory requirements, integration capabilities and opportunities to consolidate existing security tools should also guide technology selection. What would be your closing advice to CISOs who attended GISEC Global 2026? CISOs should use the event as an opportunity to reassess their security priorities against a rapidly changing technology and regulatory landscape. AI-related risks and the growing focus on post-quantum security require organisations to review whether their current controls remain fit for purpose. Security leaders should evaluate solutions that strengthen data protection, prepare their organisations for quantumrelated risks and support secure AI adoption. GISEC offers access to a broad range of technologies that can help CISOs identify gaps and adjust their cybersecurity strategies accordingly.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ CYBLE

Left to right: Ankit Sharma, VP of Field Engineering and Innovation, Cyble; Mandar Patil, Executive Vice President, International Sales, Cyble; Reshma Nair, Regional Channel Manager, Cyble; H.E. Dr. Al-Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity Council of the UAE; Beenu Arora, CEO &Co-founder, Cyble; Praveen Sengar, Senior Vice President, Cyble; and Ismail Kazi, Enterprise Sales Manager, Saudi, Cyble.

CYBLE ADVANCES PROACTIVE CYBER DEFENCE THROUGH UAE PARTNERSHIP 48

OCTOBER 2026

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I-driven threats are increasing in sophistication, placing greater pressure on governments, enterprises and cybersecurity providers to strengthen collaboration and adopt proactive defence strategies. Threat intelligence, automation and rapid remediation have become critical to protecting people, organisations and national infrastructure from emerging risks. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Beenu Arora, Cofounder and CEO of Cyble, discusses the company’s partnership with the UAE Cyber Security Council, its AI-native cybersecurity capabilities and the importance of industry-wide intelligence sharing. He also explains how Cyble’s agentic platform helps organisations detect and mitigate threats across endpoints and cloud environments. Interview excerpts

BEENU ARORA, COFOUNDER AND CEO OF CYBLE, DISCUSSES THE COMPANY’S COLLABORATION WITH THE UAE CYBER SECURITY COUNCIL, ITS AI-NATIVE THREAT INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES AND THE URGENT NEED FOR INDUSTRYWIDE COOPERATION AGAINST ADVANCED CYBER THREATS. www.tahawultech.com

What does Cyble’s partnership with the UAE Cyber Security Council aim to achieve? The partnership represents an important milestone for Cyble and the UAE Cyber Security Council. Both parties have agreed to collaborate and share proactive threat intelligence to help protect people, organisations and critical infrastructure across the UAE. Our shared objective is to support the UAE’s continued prosperity while keeping cyber risks effectively managed. We are grateful for this partnership and the opportunity to contribute to stronger national cyber resilience. What is Cyble demonstrating at GISEC Global 2026? Cyble is demonstrating its AI-native cybersecurity platform and threat intelligence capabilities. Our solutions identify malicious activity across the

MALICIOUS ACTORS ARE ALREADY USING AI AGENTS TO TARGET ORGANISATIONS, BYPASS SECURITY CONTROLS AND COMPROMISE PROTECTED ENVIRONMENTS. internet and convert that intelligence into actionable security insights. We are also showcasing our agentic platform and AI workbenches, which can remediate cyber threats across endpoints and cloud environments. Once malicious activity is detected, the platform enables organisations to mitigate the threat within seconds, extending protection from external intelligence sources to enterprise endpoints and cloud infrastructure. What is your message to the cybersecurity community on behalf of Cyble? Cyber threats are becoming significantly more advanced amid the rapid growth of AI. Malicious actors are already using AI agents to target organisations, bypass security controls and compromise protected environments. Cybersecurity vendors, OEMs, service providers and other industry stakeholders must work more closely, exchange intelligence and share ideas. Proactive risk management has become essential. The community must act now rather than wait for future threats to materialise. Cyble looks forward to working with organisations across the UAE to strengthen collaboration and build a more resilient cybersecurity ecosystem.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ TENABLE

TENABLE TARGETS EXPLOITABLE EXPOSURES ACROSS AI-DRIVEN ATTACK SURFACES GAVIN MILLARD, VICE PRESIDENT OF INTELLIGENCE AT TENABLE, DISCUSSES AUTONOMOUS CYBERATTACKS, EXPOSURE MANAGEMENT, SHADOW AI, AGENT SECURITY AND THE NEED TO REPLACE HUMANSPEED DEFENCE WITH MACHINE-SPEED PROCESSES.

I is accelerating the speed and scale of cyberattacks, increasing pressure on organisations to move beyond reactive security practices. Defenders must identify exploitable weaknesses quickly, prioritise the exposures most likely to be targeted and strengthen oversight of emerging technologies such as generative AI and autonomous agents. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Gavin Millard, Vice President of Intelligence at Tenable, explains why exposure management has become critical to preventative cybersecurity. Millard also examines the risks created by shadow AI, poorly governed AI agents and phishing attacks, while outlining how Tenable’s AI-driven capabilities can help security teams operate at machine speed.

Interview excerpts How will AI reshape cyberattacks and defence strategies over the next decade? Attackers are already using AI to launch autonomous attacks at scale, and this trend will continue over the next decade. Security teams must move from humanspeed processes to machine-speed operations if they are to defend effectively against increasingly automated threats. AI can help defenders identify risks, prioritise exposures and respond much faster. Organisations must strengthen their ability to discover vulnerabilities and remediate the weaknesses most likely to be exploited by autonomous attackers. Why has exposure management become essential for modern cyber defence? Exposure management helps organisations shift from reactive

SECURITY TEAMS MUST MOVE FROM HUMANSPEED PROCESSES TO MACHINE-SPEED OPERATIONS IF THEY ARE TO DEFEND EFFECTIVELY AGAINST INCREASINGLY AUTOMATED THREATS. 50

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security towards preventative defence. Security teams need a clear understanding of their assets, vulnerabilities and exposures across the environment. The priority is to find exposures quickly, fix them even faster and focus resources on the relatively small number of weaknesses that attackers are most likely to exploit. Such an approach helps organisations reduce risk before an attack succeeds. What security gaps are emerging as enterprises adopt AI tools and autonomous agents? Shadow AI represents a significant and often overlooked data-loss risk. Employees may share sensitive information with generative AI tools to improve a spreadsheet or presentation, allowing corporate data to leave the organisation’s controlled environment. Autonomous agents also create identity and access risks. Agents are often deployed without secure controls governing their permissions, access and ability to execute actions. Organisations also need mechanisms to audit an agent’s reasoning and decision-making. Without such safeguards, AI agents can

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Gavin Millard, Vice President of Intelligence, Tenable.

operate beyond intended boundaries and introduce considerable risk. How should organisations address phishing without placing responsibility on employees? Blaming an employee for clicking a phishing link overlooks the underlying failure of the organisation’s security controls. Security teams should identify and restrict the channels through which phishing links enter the environment and ensure that malicious links cannot successfully connect to their intended destinations.

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Organisations should also address the vulnerabilities and exposures targeted by phishing campaigns. Protecting browsers, identities, endpoints and connected systems is more effective than attributing blame to individual employees. How do Hexa AI, AI Exposure and the Cyber Agents Exchange support defenders? Hexa AI and the Cyber Agents Exchange bring together AI capabilities developed to support security teams. Agents can be shared, used and contributed by participants, allowing the wider security community to benefit from tools created

by individual contributors. AI Exposure focuses on inventory and visibility. Organisations need to know which AI tools have been deployed and how employees are using them. Visibility forms the first line of defence because security teams cannot protect technologies or assets they do not know exist. What closing advice would you give organisations strengthening their cyber resilience? Find exploitable exposures fast and fix them faster.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ OPSWAT

OPSWAT SHIFTS CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY TOWARDS PREVENTION RAMI HAZIME, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR FOR GULF AND LEVANT AT OPSWAT, EXPLAINS WHY IT-OT CONVERGENCE, EXPANDING ATTACK VECTORS AND AI-DRIVEN THREATS REQUIRE UAE ORGANISATIONS TO PRIORITISE PREVENTION OVER DETECTION AND RESPONSE. Rami Hazime, Regional Sales Director for Gulf and Levant, OPSWAT.

OCTOBER 2026

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he UAE’s rapid adoption of AI, automation and connected infrastructure is expanding the cyberattack surface across critical sectors. Growing convergence between IT and operational technology (OT) is also challenging traditional perimeter-based security and the long-held assumption that sensitive environments can remain fully isolated. Rami Hazime, Regional Sales Director for Gulf and Levant at OPSWAT, discussed with Security Advisor Middle East the complexities of protecting connected critical infrastructure; importance of local cybersecurity expertise; and why organisations must shift from detecting threats to preventing malicious files and data from entering trusted environments. Interview excerpts What distinguishes the UAE’s cybersecurity landscape, and where do the greatest challenges remain? The UAE’s defining characteristic is its pace of development. Over recent years, the country has invested heavily in AI, automation and connected infrastructure while building one of the region’s largest concentrations of critical infrastructure. Rapid digitalisation is also expanding the attack surface. More data and files are moving between interconnected systems, creating additional threat vectors as the digital economy grows. A major challenge is ensuring that data, files and connected systems can move securely between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) environments without introducing threats into critical infrastructure.

OPSWAT has operated in the UAE for more than a decade and has witnessed the country’s significant investment in cybersecurity. The issue is not a lack of investment, but the growing complexity of securing increasingly connected environments. Critical infrastructure is no longer isolated, making perimeter-based protection insufficient. Organisations must examine how data and files enter their environments and prevent threats from passing through those channels. Why is a strong local presence important for cybersecurity vendors operating in the UAE? Our experience has shown that strong technology alone is not enough. Some companies enter the market with effective solutions but lack local technical expertise, customer support and an established presence. Such companies may achieve early success but often struggle to sustain it over the long term. The UAE is more than a sales market for OPSWAT. It is a country where innovation is taking place at significant scale, particularly across critical infrastructure. We are therefore investing in local technical capabilities and expertise to remain close to our customers. Our ambition is not simply to operate as a technology vendor. We want to serve as a long-term cybersecurity partner to government entities and organisations responsible for protecting the critical infrastructure on which the country depends. Why is the traditional air-gap approach no longer sufficient for protecting critical infrastructure? The convergence of IT and OT, combined

THE CONVERGENCE OF IT AND OT, COMBINED WITH INCREASINGLY DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAINS, HAS CHALLENGED THE ASSUMPTION THAT CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE CAN REMAIN FULLY ISOLATED. www.tahawultech.com

with increasingly digital supply chains, has challenged the assumption that critical infrastructure can remain fully isolated. A decade ago, many organisations viewed isolation as the primary means of protection, with no data entering or leaving sensitive environments. Modern operations make complete isolation impractical. Oil and gas facilities require information to move between IT and OT systems, while firmware updates and security patches must reach operational environments. Defence and intelligence organisations may also need to transfer information, including satellite imagery, from less sensitive networks into highly restricted systems. Cybersecurity must therefore evolve beyond detecting and responding to threats. Organisations need preventive controls at every ingress point where data and files enter critical environments. Files should be inspected, audited and sanitised before being allowed into protected systems. How will critical infrastructure cybersecurity evolve over the next three to five years? IT and OT convergence will continue, alongside greater connectivity between trusted and untrusted networks. Organisations that lead in the coming years will design their security architectures around this reality from the outset. Threats are becoming more sophisticated and difficult to identify, with AI contributing to their speed and complexity. Traditional security models focused primarily on protecting activity within the network will become increasingly inadequate. Future-ready organisations must operate on the assumption that malicious files or threats will attempt to enter their environments. Prevention will therefore become more important than relying solely on detection and response after a compromise has occurred.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ APPKNOX

APPKNOX POWERS MOBILE SECURITY FOR AI-FIRST WORLD HARSHIT AGARWAL, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF APPKNOX, DISCUSSES AI-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT, EVOLVING MOBILE THREATS AND WHY DEDICATED APPLICATION SECURITY IS BECOMING CRITICAL FOR DIGITAL-FIRST ENTERPRISES.

I is accelerating application development, but the same technologies driving innovation are also giving attackers new ways to identify vulnerabilities and scale threats. For enterprises and governments across the Middle East, where mobile-first services are becoming central to digital transformation, securing applications throughout the development lifecycle is increasingly critical. At GISEC Global 2026, Harshit Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO of Appknox, discussed with Security Advisor Middle East the changing mobile security landscape, the need to embed security into AI-driven development, Appknox’s regional partnership with Bulwark Technologies and the mobile application security priorities enterprises should consider as they prepare for 2027. Interview excerpts How do you find GISEC Global 2026 compare to previous editions? We have been participating in GISEC since 2019 and it was one of our first major events in the region which gave us

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Harshit Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Appknox.

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the opportunity to initiate conversations and build relationships with partners. Over the years, those engagements have grown, making the event an important platform for us in the region. The energy is similar to what we have experienced at previous editions. GISEC has consistently been a strong platform for conversations with customers and partners. Our initial participation helped us establish relationships in the region, and those engagements have continued to develop over the years. What is Appknox showcasing at GISEC Global 2026? Appknox is an AI-native mobile application security platform that helps enterprises secure their mobile applications. We have been operating in the specialised domain of mobile security for several years. This year, we are specifically showcasing AI-driven capabilities that help companies secure applications within an AI-led development process. The way applications are being built has changed significantly over the past year. Development cycles that previously took two or three weeks can now be reduced to hours with the use of AI. Security assessments therefore also need to accelerate and become embedded within the development process. Security cannot sit outside the development lifecycle or be treated as an afterthought when applications are being built and released at this pace. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have become increasingly mobileand digital-first. Is mobile security keeping pace with this transformation? Over the past three to four years,

we have seen a significant shift across countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Organisations now have a much stronger understanding of mobile application security and recognise that this is an area that has not always been adequately covered by broader application security platforms. Mobile security remains a specialised domain, and that has opened significant opportunities for us to engage and work with organisations across the region. Governments are also pushing digital transformation aggressively, with mobile applications at the forefront of many services. Security around those applications therefore becomes extremely important. This has enabled us to work with government agencies, ministries and organisations delivering digital services across sectors such as healthcare. What is Appknox’s relationship with Bulwark Technologies? Bulwark Technologies is our distributor in the region. We work with Bulwark and its partner ecosystem to reach customers and expand our presence across the market. We have been working with Bulwark for approximately three to four years, and this is our third GISEC together. What are your top three recommendations for enterprises looking to strengthen mobile application security as AI accelerates both attack and defence? The first priority is to embed security into the development process. Development is becoming increasingly AI-driven, and the speed at which

DEVELOPMENT IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY AIDRIVEN, AND THE SPEED AT WHICH APPLICATIONS CAN NOW BE BUILT AND RELEASED HAS INCREASED DRAMATICALLY. www.tahawultech.com

applications can now be built and released has increased dramatically. Security therefore has to become part of the development lifecycle rather than sitting outside it or being treated as an afterthought. Second, enterprises need to recognise that traditional full-stack application security platforms can have gaps when it comes to mobile security. Mobile application security has historically not received the same level of attention, despite the growing importance of mobile applications and the risks associated with them. Third, organisations should be willing to consider specialised technologies where necessary. Enterprises naturally want to reduce the complexity associated with managing multiple vendors, but mobile security is a specialised domain. Organisations need to evaluate whether their existing security technologies provide sufficient protection for mobile applications rather than assuming broader application security tools cover every requirement. What mobile application security trends should enterprises watch in 2027? Attackers now have access to the same AI capabilities as defenders, allowing threats to scale faster and become more sophisticated. Enterprises need to respond by embedding mobile security into their broader security strategy and equipping teams to operate at the same speed. Technologies such as RASP add an important layer of protection, but no single solution is sufficient. Mobile applications have distinct security requirements and often handle highly sensitive customer data. Relying solely on traditional web application security tools can leave critical gaps. Dedicated mobile application security is therefore becoming a strategic imperative as organisations accelerate digital and mobile-first initiatives.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ SANS INSTITUTE

Moses Frost, Senior Instructor, SANS Institute.

SECURITY CULTURE STRENGTHENS RESILIENCE AMID RAPID AI ADOPTION MOSES FROST, SENIOR INSTRUCTOR AT SANS INSTITUTE, EXPLAINS WHY EXECUTIVE COMMITMENT, SECURE TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION AND RISK-BASED VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT ARE CRITICAL TO BUILDING STRONGER CYBER RESILIENCE.

apid adoption of AI, cloud platforms and other emerging technologies is helping organisations innovate, but inadequate planning and security controls can create serious protection gaps. Effective cybersecurity requires more than deploying new tools. Leadership must embed security across business operations while enabling teams to work efficiently.

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Moses Frost, Senior Instructor at SANS Institute, discusses the importance of executive-led security culture, simplifying cybersecurity for business leaders and prioritising vulnerabilities according to their exploitability with Security Advisor Middle East. Frost also explains how organisations can combine AI and cloud technologies to develop resilient security policies without restricting innovation.

Interview excerpts Why do organisations continue to repeat familiar cybersecurity mistakes, and what lessons should leaders take from previous failures? Organisations often prioritise rapid technology adoption because they want to remain competitive or improve business performance. Security gaps emerge when teams deploy new technologies without fully understanding the problem

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being addressed or the associated risks. A technology functioning correctly does not necessarily mean it has been securely integrated into the organisation. Leaders should begin by identifying critical systems, data and business processes before determining which protections are required. Security should enable the organisation to operate more safely rather than prevent the business from moving forward. Experience from penetration testing and red-team exercises also shows that technology alone does not determine resilience. Organisations with strong executive support and a securityconscious culture are generally much harder to compromise. Senior leaders across business, finance, operations and IT must therefore treat cybersecurity as a shared organisational responsibility. How can organisations build cybersecurity strategies aligned with their specific business operations, risks and regulatory responsibilities? Every organisation has different technologies, operational requirements, risk profiles and regulatory obligations. Cybersecurity strategies should reflect those specific conditions rather than rely on a standard set of controls applied without context. Organisations should identify their most critical assets and understand how a disruption or compromise would affect business operations. Security controls can then be built around those priorities. Regulatory requirements should provide a framework for responsible operations, but compliance alone should not define the entire strategy. Management support remains essential. Executives must give security

and IT teams the authority, resources and organisational backing required to implement appropriate safeguards. Embedding security gradually across everyday processes can create sustainable improvements without unnecessarily restricting the business. How can security teams communicate complex cyber risks to senior management in clear business terms? Security teams should simplify technical issues and connect them to business outcomes. Senior leaders need to understand how a risk could affect operations, customers, revenue or regulatory responsibilities, along with the practical steps available to reduce that exposure. Passwordless authentication provides a useful example. Organisations have struggled with password security for decades, but modern passwordless technologies can improve protection while also making access easier for users. Demonstrating that a security measure can reduce risk without adding complexity makes the business case much clearer. Effective communication should show how security supports productivity and makes people’s work easier. Security professionals also need the skills to translate technical findings into concise, relevant messages that executives can understand and act upon. How is AI intensifying vulnerability management challenges and increasing pressure on already strained patching processes? AI is likely to accelerate the discovery of vulnerabilities, creating a significant increase in the volume of issues reported to security teams. Not every vulnerability

ATTACKERS COULD EXPLOIT WEAKNESSES IN THESE WIDELY USED BUT LESS WELL-FUNDED PLATFORMS, MAKING SUPPLY-CHAIN VISIBILITY AND RISK-BASED PRIORITISATION INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT. www.tahawultech.com

will be exploitable, however, and organisations may be unable to patch every critical finding immediately. Security teams should focus on actionable risk. An environment may contain thousands of vulnerabilities, but only a small number might have working exploits or present an immediate pathway for attackers. Prioritising those issues allows teams to direct limited resources towards the exposures most likely to be exploited. Smaller and medium-sized technology providers may face the greatest pressure because they lack the security resources available to major vendors such as Microsoft or Apple. Attackers could exploit weaknesses in these widely used but less well-funded platforms, making supply-chain visibility and risk-based prioritisation increasingly important. How can organisations build sustainable, cost-effective cloud and critical infrastructure security strategies in regulated environments? Regulated organisations may face restrictions on which technologies, services or cloud environments they can use. Those constraints do not prevent them from implementing effective security because sufficient tools and established practices are already available. Organisations can combine cloud-native capabilities with AI models to strengthen infrastructure configurations and security policies. AI models can help assess cloudhardening requirements and support the programmatic implementation of suitable controls. Many cloud security building blocks are structured and repeatable, making them well suited to carefully governed automation. A sustainable strategy should prioritise critical systems, automate repeatable security tasks and apply controls that reflect regulatory obligations. Combining cloud technologies, AI-assisted analysis and strong governance can help organisations improve resilience while controlling cost and operational complexity.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES

BULWARK CHARTS CYBERSECURITY PRIORITIES FOR AI ERA JOSE MENACHERRY, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES, DISCUSSES RESPONSIBLE AI ADOPTION, EVOLVING ENTERPRISE SECURITY REQUIREMENTS, AND THE GROWING URGENCY AROUND POST-QUANTUM READINESS

apid AI adoption and emerging risks such as post-quantum threats are adding new layers of complexity to the cybersecurity landscape, placing greater pressure on enterprises to balance innovation with security, governance and measurable business outcomes. Bulwark Technologies has spent 27 years building its cybersecurity presence across the region, while adapting its portfolio and partner ecosystem to address evolving enterprise requirements. Jose Menacherry, Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies, discussed with Sandhya D’Mello, Technology Editor, CPI Media Group, at GISEC Global 2026, the company’s growth journey; the changing cybersecurity landscape; responsible AI adoption; the importance of human oversight; and why organisations need to begin preparing for the transition to postquantum cryptography. Interview excerpts Bulwark’s journey spans almost three decades, beginning in 1999. Having witnessed the region’s digital transformation, how does it feel to see Bulwark’s presence and growth at GISEC Global 2026? We had a very humble beginning in 1999,

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starting as a two-person company. It has now been 27 years, and we have grown gradually by adding new technologies, vendors, partners, and, of course, customers. Our growth has always been stage-by-stage rather than sudden. Today, we have offices across the region, including Saudi Arabia, as well as operations in India. We continue to explore opportunities to expand further. Over the years, we have built strong relationships with our channel partners and developed a portfolio of more than 30 vendors covering different areas of cybersecurity. Alongside technologies, we also provide services and solutions that enable our partners to address customers’ evolving requirements. The role of distributors and resellers has changed significantly. How are enterprises balancing the AI hype with existing technology investments and the need to deliver measurable business outcomes? Cybersecurity is constantly evolving.

When we started, cybersecurity itself was a relatively niche area, but the landscape has changed significantly over the years. New threats continue to emerge, and organisations need to adapt accordingly. There is no single cybersecurity solution that can address every requirement. Organisations may need multiple technologies that integrate with their existing infrastructure and security systems. Cybersecurity is a continuous process rather than a onetime investment. Requirements also differ from one organisation to another. Businesses need to understand what they are protecting, the risks they face, and the outcomes they expect. As a distribution company, our role is to work closely with partners and enterprises to understand those requirements. Based on that understanding, we can bring together multiple technologies and solutions to address specific business and security needs.

BEFORE DEPLOYING AI, BUSINESSES SHOULD UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE GETTING INTO, WHAT THEY WANT TO ACHIEVE, AND HOW FAR THEY ARE PREPARED TO ALLOW AI SYSTEMS TO OPERATE AUTONOMOUSLY. www.tahawultech.com

potential future impact of quantum computing on existing encryption technologies. Organisations also need to consider the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat. Information stolen today may remain valuable for many years. Even if attackers cannot decrypt that information now, future quantum capabilities could potentially allow them to access it. Companies therefore need to begin preparing for post-quantum cryptography now. Migration cannot be treated as a one-time project; it is a process involving multiple stages. The first step is understanding the organisation’s existing cryptographic environment and identifying potential exposure. Businesses need to assess where cryptography is being used, determine which systems may be vulnerable, and establish priorities for remediation. From there, organisations can begin moving towards post-quantum-ready environments. We are working with multiple vendors and technologies that support cryptographic discovery, assessment, PKI, certificates, data protection and other elements required for this transition.

Jose Menacherry, Managing Director, Bulwark Technologies.

With no one-size-fits-all approach, what advice would you give enterprises navigating AI, cybersecurity disruption and growing pressure to demonstrate ROI? AI has become one of the biggest technology developments of the past three or four years. Many companies are introducing AI-based products and tools, while organisations may already have AI applications operating within their environments. Enterprises therefore need to establish a proper balance between what they expect from AI and what AI should be permitted to do. Organisations should define clear boundaries and policies governing how AI technologies are deployed and used. Human involvement also remains

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important, particularly when AI is involved in critical decisions. Organisations need to determine where automation is appropriate and where human intervention and oversight are necessary. Before deploying AI, businesses should understand what they are getting into, what they want to achieve, and how far they are prepared to allow AI systems to operate autonomously. What will be Bulwark’s key areas of focus in 2027? AI will be one of our core focus areas, particularly AI security, security for AI, and the secure use of AI technologies. Another major area is post-quantum cryptography. This is becoming increasingly important because of the

What is your message to the cybersecurity community at GISEC Global 2026? AI is clearly one of the biggest themes at GISEC Global 2026. Organisations need AI because of the speed at which businesses and cyber threats are evolving. Companies need to act faster, process more information and make decisions more efficiently, and AI can play an important role in enabling that. At the same time, organisations need to be careful about how AI is implemented. Governance, security and appropriate human oversight remain essential. AI is becoming increasingly important for organisations that want to remain competitive, but adoption must be balanced with a clear understanding of the associated risks. Businesses need to embrace AI while ensuring that the right controls, policies and security measures are in place.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ MANAGEENGINE

MANAGEENGINE UNIFIES IT AND SECURITY OPERATIONS THROUGH AGENTIC AI PRANEETH VANTERU, TECHNICAL EVANGELIST AT MANAGEENGINE, DISCUSSES HOW ZIA AGENTS, INTEGRATED PLATFORMS AND STRONGER GOVERNANCE CAN HELP REGIONAL ENTERPRISES AUTOMATE OPERATIONS WHILE MAINTAINING CONTROL OVER DATA, IDENTITIES AND AI-DRIVEN ACTIONS.

utonomous AI agents are reshaping enterprise IT and cybersecurity by analysing events, investigating anomalies and executing routine tasks at machine speed. Growing adoption has also intensified concerns around identity, data sovereignty, regulatory compliance and the level of authority granted to AI systems. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Praneeth Vanteru, Technical Evangelist at ManageEngine, explains how Zia Agents support IT service management and security operations through unified organisational context. Vanteru also discusses ManageEngine’s UAE data centre, the convergence of IT and cybersecurity, rising identity risks and the importance of maintaining human oversight as enterprise automation expands. Interview excerpts How are ManageEngine’s Zia Agents shaping the next phase of autonomous, AI-powered IT and security operations? Enterprise technology environments have

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traditionally relied on multiple siloed products, but the industry is moving towards greater platform unification. ManageEngine benefits from having unified context across several technology domains, allowing Zia Agents to perform different functions according to the operational requirement. Within cybersecurity, Zia Agents can support analysis, correlation, anomaly detection and investigation before acting on identified issues. In IT service management, Level 1 and Level 2 agents can manage many repetitive tasks currently handled by IT teams. This approach enables organisations to automate routine work at scale while giving employees more time to focus on complex operations and strategic priorities. How are evolving cybersecurity, data protection and AI governance requirements influencing technology investment decisions in the region? Data protection and localisation requirements have become increasingly important across the region.

ManageEngine has responded by launching a UAE data centre, which went live in 2026, helping customers address local data residency and regulatory requirements. AI governance has also become a major investment consideration. Enterprise discussions have moved beyond what AI can deliver towards how organisations can control its access, authority and actions. ManageEngine’s Zia platform is built on its own large language model, giving the company greater control over what AI agents can do, how much access they receive and which actions they are permitted to take. How has customer demand for IT management and cybersecurity solutions changed across MENA? Customers increasingly want integrated platforms that connect IT operations, cybersecurity, identity and service management. Operational performance and cybersecurity can no longer be treated as separate concerns because every application can carry both performance and security implications.

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Praneeth Vanteru, Technical Evangelist, ManageEngine.

Demand is therefore shifting away from isolated tools towards platforms that provide broader visibility, shared context and orchestration across multiple products. Identity has also become a more prominent customer priority, leading ManageEngine to introduce a new identity and access management solution

showcased at GISEC Global 2026. What emerging cybersecurity trends should organisations in the Middle East be preparing for? Identity-related threats will become increasingly important as employees, AI agents and large language models interact

IDENTITY-RELATED THREATS WILL BECOME INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT AS EMPLOYEES, AI AGENTS AND LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS INTERACT WITH ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS IN DIFFERENT WAYS. www.tahawultech.com

with enterprise systems in different ways. Organisations must understand who or what is accessing their environments, which permissions have been granted and what actions can be performed. Greater unification across previously siloed security and IT products will represent another major trend. Vendors capable of orchestrating technologies through integrated platforms will be better positioned to support customers because they can develop a more complete understanding of each organisation’s environment. Enterprises should use AI agents for repetitive and high-volume tasks while maintaining strong governance and human oversight.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ FORTINET

FORTINET TACKLES SHADOW AI THROUGH INTEGRATED CYBER DEFENCE KALLE BJÖRN, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AT FORTINET, DISCUSSES HOW AI-DRIVEN AUTOMATION, ZERO-TRUST ACCESS AND UNIFIED SECURITY CAN HELP ORGANISATIONS PROTECT HYBRID WORKPLACES AND CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE.

rtificial intelligence has rapidly moved beyond experimentation into production environments, creating new security, governance and visibility challenges for enterprises. Shadow AI, identity risks, third-party platforms and increasingly automated cyberattacks are placing greater pressure on organisations to strengthen control over users, applications and data. Kalle Björn, Senior Director of Systems Engineering for the Middle East at Fortinet, explains why organisations need integrated security platforms that share threat intelligence and automate

response at machine speed. He also discusses the role of zero trust in hybrid workplaces and the importance of securing data flows between IT and operational technology environments. Interview excerpts How is AI changing the cyber threat landscape, and how can organisations defend against AI-powered attacks? AI adoption has accelerated significantly, with many organisations moving beyond experimentation and integrating AI tools into production environments. This creates risks such as shadow AI, where employees use applications without the

CONTINUOUS MONITORING AND STRICT SECURITY CONTROLS ARE ALSO ESSENTIAL FOR PROTECTING DATA EXCHANGES WHILE MAINTAINING OPERATIONAL AVAILABILITY. 62

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organisation’s knowledge or approval. Enterprises need clear governance frameworks, comprehensive visibility and effective controls over how AI tools access and process corporate data. Cybercriminals are also using integrated AI tools to launch attacks at greater speed and scale. Human-led processes alone cannot respond quickly enough, making AI-supported defence essential. Organisations should deploy integrated security platforms that share intelligence across tools, automate threat response and contain malicious activity before it spreads. How can AI and automation help security teams improve threat detection and response? AI can analyse activity across the security environment, identify potential threats and help teams respond at machine speed. This becomes particularly important when malware and other attacks spread faster than human

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Kalle Björn, Senior Director of Systems Engineering for the Middle East, Fortinet.

analysts can investigate and contain them. Security tools must work as an integrated platform rather than operate in silos. Once systems communicate and share threat intelligence, automation can coordinate detection, investigation and response. AI can support this process by analysing alerts, identifying malicious behaviour and initiating appropriate action, enabling security teams to respond much faster. How should security strategies evolve as organisations adopt more cloud services and hybrid work, and what role does SASE play? Cloud adoption and hybrid working have expanded the enterprise attack surface and made identity more important to cybersecurity. Organisations must verify that users are who they claim

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to be, control access to applications and validate the security of third-party platforms hosting business systems and AI tools. SASE supports this approach by combining networking and security capabilities to protect users regardless of location. Zero trust remains a central element, ensuring that only verified and authorised users can access specific systems, services and data. Continuous identity validation, access enforcement and monitoring help organisations secure distributed workforces and cloud environments. What are the biggest cybersecurity challenges facing critical infrastructure, and how can organisations strengthen resilience across IT and OT environments? IT and operational technology

environments were traditionally isolated, but growing demand for data and process optimisation has increased connectivity between them. This convergence creates new risks because IT and OT environments often operate with different technologies, security requirements and risk profiles. Organisations should maintain clear segmentation based on recognised frameworks such as the Purdue Model. A secure demilitarised zone should be established between IT and OT networks to inspect traffic, prevent malicious code from reaching critical systems and enforce controlled access. Continuous monitoring and strict security controls are also essential for protecting data exchanges while maintaining operational availability.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ HCL SOFTWARE

HCL SOFTWARE ADVANCES AI-DRIVEN CYBER AND OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE DHRUV KOHLI, VICE PRESIDENT – INDIA & MIDDLE EAST AT HCLSOFTWARE, EXPLAINS HOW INTELLIOPS, BIGFIX, APPSCAN AND HCL WORKLOAD AUTOMATION HELP ENTERPRISES SECURE APPLICATIONS AND ENDPOINTS WHILE ADOPTING INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION.

I and intelligent automation are moving beyond experimentation to play a central role in enterprise decision-making and operations. This shift presents opportunities to improve efficiency and manage complexity, but also increases the need for stronger security, governance and operational guardrails. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East at GISEC Global 2026, Dhruv Kohli, Vice President – India & Middle East at HCLSoftware, discusses the company’s IntelliOps framework, its approach to securing applications and endpoints, and the importance of combining AI adoption with proactive cyber resilience. Interview excerpts What is HCLSoftware showcasing at GISEC this year, and what conversations are you having with customers? HCLSoftware is showcasing IntelliOps, our framework spanning CyberOps, BusinessOps and ITOps. The portfolio includes flagship products such as HCL BigFix, HCL AppScan and HCL Workload Automation. Our customer conversations focus on securing application environments,

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protecting servers and endpoints, and helping organisations adopt AI while strengthening operational resilience. Cybersecurity and AI are central to nearly every discussion taking place at GISEC this year. How is HCLSoftware helping enterprises strengthen security across applications, endpoints and their broader technology environments? HCLSoftware helps enterprises address security risks across the technology landscape, from endpoints to applications. HCL BigFix supports endpoint management and protection, while HCL AppScan helps organisations identify and address application security risks. This capability has become increasingly important with the growth of AI-assisted and autonomous software development. Organisations need greater visibility and control over newly created applications, including headless applications, to maintain a strong cybersecurity posture. Our solutions help customers become more proactive, prepared and resilient. How are AI and intelligent automation transforming IT and business operations? AI has moved beyond experimentation

and become embedded within business and IT operations. It is increasingly capable of making decisions, automating processes and supporting autonomous operations. This shift creates opportunities to improve efficiency, scale operations and address complexity, but it also requires effective guardrails. HCLSoftware’s portfolio embeds intelligent automation within core IT operations while helping organisations maintain the necessary control, governance and resilience. What has stood out for you at GISEC this year, and what does it indicate about the future of enterprise technology? Cybersecurity and AI have dominated conversations at GISEC this year. Organisations are exploring how to secure new applications and technology environments while protecting their server and endpoint estates. The discussions indicate that enterprises must look beyond AI adoption alone. Future technology strategies will need to combine innovation with proactive security, strong governance and operational resilience. Organisations that address AI and cybersecurity together will be better positioned to manage emerging business challenges.

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Dhruv Kohli, Vice President – India & Middle East, HCL SOFTWARE.

ORGANISATIONS NEED GREATER VISIBILITY AND CONTROL OVER NEWLY CREATED APPLICATIONS, INCLUDING HEADLESS APPLICATIONS, TO MAINTAIN A STRONG CYBERSECURITY POSTURE.

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OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ SOPHOS

SOPHOS SHARPENS CYBER RESILIENCE STRATEGY ACROSS MIDDLE EAST HARISH CHIB, VICE-PRESIDENT FOR EMERGING MARKETS, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA, SOPHOS, DISCUSSES CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION, AI-LED SECURITY OPERATIONS, MANAGED SERVICES AND REGIONAL EXPANSION.

ANALYSTS MUST ALSO REMAIN INVOLVED WHENEVER A DECISION COULD CREATE SUBSTANTIAL BUSINESS IMPACT OR REQUIRES A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF OPERATIONAL CONTEXT.

OCTOBER 2026

Harish Chib, Vice President for Emerging Markets, Middle East & Africa, Sophos.

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yber resilience now extends beyond preventing attacks to maintaining operations during active incidents. Organisations must secure interconnected IT, operational technology, cloud, identity and third-party environments while responding to threats at greater speed. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Harish Chib, Vice President for Emerging Markets, Middle East & Africa, Sophos, discusses layered defence, managed detection and response, governed AI autonomy and human oversight. He also explains how managed service providers can help underresourced businesses strengthen their security posture and outlines Sophos’ priorities for the Middle East. Interview excerpts What does effective cyber resilience look like for organisations operating across the GCC’s critical infrastructure sectors? Cyber resilience in critical infrastructure is no longer limited to preventing attacks. Organisations must also maintain operational continuity and continue serving customers and suppliers while an active incident is being investigated and contained. Effective resilience requires a layered defence that enables organisations to prevent, detect, respond to and recover from cyber incidents. Continuous visibility must extend beyond conventional IT assets, such as laptops and servers, to operational technology, cloud platforms, identities and connected third-party environments across the supply chain. Speed and accountability are particularly important in high-impact sectors. AI can accelerate investigation, triage and response, but human oversight remains essential when decisions involve significant operational or business risk. How is Sophos helping under-resourced SMBs and mid-market organisations address the region’s cybersecurity skills gap? Cyberattacks do not distinguish between large enterprises and smaller

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businesses. SMBs and mid-market organisations, however, often lack the budgets and specialist skills required to employ dedicated CISOs, build security operations centres or maintain separate infrastructure, application and cybersecurity teams. Sophos helps bridge this gap through managed security services, including services delivered through its partner ecosystem. The objective is to reduce the operational burden on lean IT teams by providing continuous protection, detection and response. Advisory services also help organisations address governance and compliance requirements, including the need for independent assessments. These capabilities are integrated through the Sophos platform, giving customers access to operational security and practical guidance without having to build every capability internally. How much SOC decision-making is now AI-driven, and where should human oversight remain essential during highstakes incidents? Sophos uses AI to help security teams manage the speed and scale of modern threats, correlate signals and deliver high-confidence responses. Repeatable tasks with well-understood patterns can be assigned to agentic AI systems, enabling investigations and responses to take place within seconds. Human expertise remains essential for complex, unfamiliar or novel incidents. Analysts must also remain involved whenever a decision could create substantial business impact or requires a deeper understanding of operational context. Our guiding principle is governed autonomy. Tested, repeatable and clearly bounded processes can be automated, while highrisk decisions retain human oversight. The model remains AI-led with humans in the loop rather than fully autonomous. Which cybersecurity challenges are driving organisations towards MSPs, and how are providers adapting their services? MSPs were traditionally expected to

deliver technology-focused operational outcomes, including infrastructure management and application maintenance. Expectations are now expanding because many SMBs and mid-market organisations lack dedicated cybersecurity leaders and specialist security teams. Customers increasingly want MSPs to act as trusted cybersecurity advisers and, in some cases, serve as de facto CISOs. This shift allows MSPs to support governance, reporting, security assessments and incident response alongside their traditional technical services.Sophos provides MSPs with a platform and dedicated training resources to support this transition. Training covers advisory services and effective responses during active cyber incidents. Upskilling and reskilling help MSPs evolve from technical service providers into strategic cybersecurity partners. What are Sophos’ main business priorities for the Middle East over the next six months? Sophos remains committed to expanding its presence in the Middle East. Current plans include growing the regional team, expanding enterprise capabilities and exploring the establishment of a local security operations centre when conditions make the investment feasible. AI-native security capabilities, managed detection and response, and stronger support for MSPs will remain key priorities. Sophos also plans to help organisations achieve practical resilience through unified visibility across their security controls, stronger prevention and detection, and faster incident response. Further investment in the partner ecosystem will help organisations adapt their security programmes as regional cyber risks evolve. These priorities are intended to strengthen protection for enterprises while enabling MSPs to support SMB and mid-market customers more effectively.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ NEXTCLOUD / VAD TECHNOLOGIES

NEXTCLOUD STRENGTHENS SOVEREIGN COLLABORATION ACROSS GCC NEXTCLOUD AND VAD TECHNOLOGIES DISCUSS GROWING REGIONAL DEMAND FOR SECURE, ON-PREMISE COLLABORATION AND THE ROLE OF PARTNERS IN SUPPORTING DATA SOVEREIGNTY Joe Dutka, Sales Engineer, Nextcloud.

ata sovereignty, privacy and secure collaboration have become strategic priorities for governments and regulated organisations across the Middle East. Growing concerns around data residency and reliance on public cloud platforms are prompting enterprises to explore digital workplace solutions that provide greater control over sensitive information. In this interview, Joe Dutka, Sales Engineer at Nextcloud; Aaron Martin, Sales Team Lead at Nextcloud; and Shahsin Shafeek PV, Product Manager at VAD Technologies, discuss Nextcloud’s open-source and modular architecture, its ability to operate on-premise and within air-gapped environments, and rising demand across the GCC. Interview excerpts What differentiates Nextcloud from traditional collaboration platforms, particularly for organisations with strict data sovereignty and security requirements? Joe Dutka: Nextcloud is an open-source enterprise collaboration platform that can be deployed in any environment, giving organisations complete control over their data and supporting digital sovereignty at national, organisational and domain levels. Its modular architecture allows customers to

DEMAND IS BEING DRIVEN BY CUSTOMERS SEEKING SECURE COLLABORATION CAPABILITIES WHILE RETAINING FULL CONTROL OVER WHERE THEIR DATA IS STORED AND PROCESSED. 68

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Aaron Martin, Sales Team Lead, Nextcloud.

deploy only the capabilities they require. Organisations can use Nextcloud for file collaboration, productivity applications, document editing, video conferencing and secure messaging. Each capability can be deployed independently or as part of an integrated digital workplace. Unlike traditional cloud-based collaboration platforms, Nextcloud can operate on-premise or within an organisationcontrolled environment. Customers decide where their data resides, how it is managed and who can access it, making the platform particularly suitable for organisations with strict privacy, security and regulatory requirements. What are you hearing from customers in the region, and which industries or use cases are driving the strongest demand for Nextcloud? Aaron Martin: Nextcloud is experiencing strong interest across the GCC, particularly in the UAE’s public sector. Government organisations are placing greater emphasis on privacy, data sovereignty and maintaining control over sensitive information. Nextcloud’s ability to operate on-premise and within air-gapped environments makes it well Shahsin Shafeek PV, Product Manager, VAD Technologies.

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suited to public-sector organisations and other regulated entities that cannot rely entirely on public cloud platforms. Demand is being driven by customers seeking secure collaboration capabilities while retaining full control over where their data is stored and processed.

From VAD Technologies’ perspective, what opportunities do you see for Nextcloud in the GCC, and how is VAD working with partners to take the solution to market? Shahsin Shafeek PV: Nextcloud represents a strong opportunity across the GCC because organisations are actively seeking alternative ways to control, manage and determine the location of their data. Demand is particularly relevant among public-sector customers and organisations operating in regulated industries. VAD Technologies is focused on building a sustainable, partner-led business ecosystem around Nextcloud. Our role goes beyond distributing the solution. We identify suitable partners, strengthen their technical capabilities and provide the knowledge transfer needed to position, deploy and support the platform effectively. Cybersecurity is not limited to defensive technologies. Maintaining control over data, including where it resides and how it is managed, has become equally important. Nextcloud addresses this requirement by enabling organisations to build secure collaboration environments under their direct control.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ OPSWAT

OPSWAT FORTIFIES CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE AGAINST FILE-BORNE THREATS SAIF ALREFAI, SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING DIRECTOR FOR THE MIDDLE EAST AT OPSWAT, EXPLAINS HOW DEEP CDR, METADEFENDER AND DATA DIODES ENABLE SECURE FILE TRANSFERS WHILE SUPPORTING ZERO-TRUST PROTECTION FOR CRITICAL NETWORKS.

ritical infrastructure organisations face growing exposure to advanced, AI-enabled and file-borne threats as operational environments become increasingly connected. Effective protection requires purpose-built security controls capable of sanitising files, securing transfers and preventing sensitive information from leaving isolated networks. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East at GISEC Global 2026, Saif Alrefai, Solutions Engineering Director for the Middle East at OPSWAT, discusses how Deep Content Disarm and Reconstruction, MetaDefender and unidirectional security gateways support zero-trust file transfer. Alrefai also explains why organisations must strengthen fundamental security controls before introducing AI-driven automation.

Interview excerpts How did your experience at GISEC Global 2026 compare with previous editions? GISEC Global 2026 has been highly productive for OPSWAT. We have held valuable meetings with partners and customers, and we are pleased to participate in the event again. It continues to provide an important platform for engaging with the regional cybersecurity community and discussing critical infrastructure protection. How does OPSWAT use deep content inspection and file sanitisation to prevent advanced threats from reaching critical infrastructure environments? OPSWAT uses Deep Content Disarm and Reconstruction (Deep CDR) to mitigate file-borne threats,

GISEC GLOBAL PROVIDES AN IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE CYBERSECURITY COMMUNITY TO CONNECT, EXCHANGE IDEAS AND EXPLORE WAYS TO STRENGTHEN CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION. 70

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including advanced, AI-generated and AI-enabled attacks. Rather than relying solely on threat detection, the technology applies a zero-trust approach to file security. Potentially malicious or harmful content is removed from each file before it enters a critical network or infrastructure environment. This process enables organisations to use clean, sanitised files without exposing sensitive systems to embedded threats. How does OPSWAT secure data transfers between IT and OT environments while maintaining operational availability and protecting air-gapped networks? OPSWAT secures the complete filetransfer process. Files are first scanned and sanitised through the MetaDefender platform to ensure they are safe to use. Once sanitisation is complete, files can be transferred into an air-gapped network through OPSWAT’s NetWall unidirectional security gateway, or data diode. The technology permits data to move in one direction while preventing information from travelling back out. This approach protects restricted environments while allowing critical operations to continue without disruption.

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Saif Alrefai, Solutions Engineering Director for the Middle East, OPSWAT.

What should enterprises consider when selecting technology to protect critical networks? Enterprises should choose purposebuilt technologies designed specifically for critical infrastructure environments. Generic cybersecurity tools may not always be suitable for specialised IT and OT networks or the operational conditions in which they function. Technology selection should reflect the organisation’s environment, risk profile and operational requirements. Controls must provide strong protection without disrupting essential services.

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How can enterprises balance traditional security tools with AI-based technologies? AI can strengthen security workflows and improve automation, but organisations should not overlook cybersecurity fundamentals. Strong security controls, zero-trust architecture and clearly defined processes must form the foundation of the security strategy. Once those fundamentals are in place, enterprises can introduce AI-driven automation more effectively. The right balance combines established security practices with AI capabilities that build

upon a resilient and well-governed architecture. What is your message to the regional cybersecurity community from GISEC Global 2026? GISEC Global provides an important opportunity for the cybersecurity community to connect, exchange ideas and explore ways to strengthen critical infrastructure protection. I encourage regional organisations, partners and security professionals to engage with OPSWAT and discuss how we can work together to protect critical environments.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ CYBLE

Beenu Arora, Co-founder and CEO, Cyble.

STRONGER COLLABORATION BETWEEN GOVERNMENTS, ENTERPRISES AND TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS WILL REMAIN ESSENTIAL BECAUSE DEFENDERS MUST EXCHANGE INTELLIGENCE AND EVOLVE FASTER THAN ATTACKERS.

OCTOBER 2026

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CYBLE STRENGTHENS UAE CYBER DEFENCE THROUGH AGENTIC AI BEENU ARORA, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF CYBLE, EXPLAINS HOW INTELLIGENCE SHARING, MACHINE-SPEED REMEDIATION AND STRONGER AI GOVERNANCE CAN HELP THE UAE COUNTER SOPHISTICATED CYBER THREATS AND PROTECT CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE.

I is enabling cybercriminals to scale phishing, fraud, reconnaissance and deepfake attacks with greater speed and precision. Governments and enterprises must consequently move beyond reactive security towards intelligence-led defence capable of identifying and mitigating threats before they cause disruption. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Beenu Arora, Co-founder and CEO of Cyble, discusses the company’s collaboration with the UAE Cybersecurity Council, the role of agentic AI in accelerating threat remediation and the governance measures required to build long-term national cyber resilience. Interview excerpts How will Cyble-UAE Cyber Security Council MoU strengthen the UAE’s cyber defence capabilities? The MoU between Cyble and the UAE Cybersecurity Council strengthens the exchange of threat intelligence to support more proactive protection across the country. It enables both parties to use timely intelligence to identify emerging risks, strengthen safeguards and respond before threats affect people, organisations or critical infrastructure.The collaboration reflects a shared commitment to protecting

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the UAE’s digital economy and supporting national resilience. Cyble’s platform collects intelligence from across the internet and feeds it into an agentic environment capable of driving remediation across endpoints and cloud infrastructure at machine speed and scale. How are attackers using AI to industrialise phishing, fraud and reconnaissance? Attackers are using AI to collect open-source intelligence, create fake executive profiles and produce highly personalised messages targeting specific employees. This allows them to conduct sophisticated phishing campaigns at far greater speed and scale. Deepfake video and voice scams are also increasing at an alarming rate. Criminals can impersonate trusted individuals to manipulate employees, extract sensitive information or authorise fraudulent activity. AI capabilities are now available to attackers as well as defenders, making these campaigns more convincing and difficult to detect. What does the shift from reactive to proactive, intelligence-led defence look like for a nation? Reactive security is no longer sufficient because attacks are becoming more frequent, scalable and sophisticated. Cyber incidents can disrupt power generation, compromise water supplies and affect other essential services, creating serious

consequences for society as well as the organisations operating that infrastructure. Intelligence-led defence focuses on identifying indicators of malicious activity and mitigating risks before an attack succeeds. Governments, cybersecurity organisations and technology providers must share intelligence consistently and use it to strengthen national safeguards. Cyble’s collaboration with the UAE Cybersecurity Council demonstrates how public-private cooperation can support this proactive approach. Looking five years ahead, what will define a nation that is genuinely cyber-resilient? Cyber resilience will increasingly depend on how effectively governments and enterprises govern AI-based systems. Organisations are adopting autonomous agents to generate insights, make decisions and perform remediation, but greater attention must be given to how those agents operate and whether their actions can be traced. Auditability, traceability and clearly defined guardrails will become critical. Organisations will also need to assess the accuracy, efficacy and error rates of AI systems as they execute assigned objectives. Stronger collaboration between governments, enterprises and technology providers will remain essential because defenders must exchange intelligence and evolve faster than attackers.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ THALES

CONSIDERING IMPACT OF AN AI-DRIVEN FUTURE ON MARKETING ZAHRA HANIF, SR REGIONAL MARKETING MANAGER META, THALES CYBERSECURITY PRODUCTS, DISCUSSES THE VALUES AND CHALLENGES THE AI ERA IS CAUSING FOR THE MARKETING INDUSTRY IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW.

I is reshaping marketing’s capacity to understand audiences, personalise experiences and make better decisions. Greater speed and content output, however, also raise questions about originality, relevance and the judgement required to earn customers’ attention. For Zahra Hanif, Senior Regional Marketing Manager META, Thales Cybersecurity Products, the opportunity lies in combining AI’s analytical capabilities with human creativity, empathy and commercial understanding. In this exclusive interview, Hanif explores the evolving responsibilities of marketing leaders, the risks of relying too heavily on automation and why using AI with purpose will matter more than adopting every new tool. Interview excerpts AI is everywhere right now. From a marketing leader’s perspective, what is actually changing? The biggest change isn’t simply that marketers can do things faster. It’s that we can make better decisions earlier.

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AI gives us the ability to understand audiences, identify patterns and personalise experiences at a scale that wasn’t possible before. But I don’t believe the future of marketing is about automating everything. The real opportunity is knowing what to automate and where human judgement, creativity and empathy still matter most. For marketing leaders, that balance is becoming a very important part of the job. Do you think AI will make marketing more or less creative? Potentially, much more creative — but only if we use it that way. AI can remove a lot of the repetitive work surrounding creativity. research, variations, first drafts, analysis and testing. That gives marketers more space to focus on the idea itself. At the same time, there is a risk of everything beginning to look and sound the same if we rely too heavily on AI-generated output. The brands that stand out will still be the ones with a distinct point of view, strong storytelling and people behind them who understand culture and emotion. AI can accelerate creativity. It shouldn’t replace originality.

With AI making it easier to produce more content, is “more” necessarily better? Not at all. In fact, I think AI will eventually force marketing to become more selective. We can now create ten campaigns, fifty pieces of content or hundreds of variations incredibly quickly. But customers don’t need more noise. The question I increasingly think marketers should ask is not, “How much can we produce?” but “What is actually worth someone’s attention?” Attention is becoming one of the most valuable currencies in marketing. AI can help us scale, but leadership is knowing when not to. How do you see the role of the CMO or marketing leader evolving because of AI? Marketing leadership is becoming much broader. A strong marketing leader today needs to understand brand and creativity, but also data, technology, customer experience and commercial impact. AI brings all of those areas even closer together. I also think our role is shifting

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Yahya Kassab, Senior Director and GM: KSA & Gulf Commvault.

Zahra Hanif, Sr Regional Marketing Manager META, Thales.

from managing marketing activity to creating intelligent growth engines — understanding where the business wants to go, where the customer is going, and using technology and creativity to connect the two. That requires curiosity. You don’t have to be the most technical person in the room, but you do have to keep learning. In a world increasingly driven by algorithms and automation, how important is the human side of marketing? More important than ever. Technology can tell us a great deal about behaviour

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— what someone clicked, searched for, engaged with or ignored. But understanding why someone cares is still deeply human. Some of the strongest marketing moments are surprisingly simple: a conversation, an experience, a story someone remembers, or a connection that continues long after an event or campaign ends. AI can help us understand and reach people. But marketing still has to make them feel something. What advice would you give marketers who are trying to prepare for an AIdriven future?

Experiment now, but don’t chase every new tool. Learn enough about AI to understand what it can genuinely change in your work. Use it to challenge your thinking, analyse faster, test ideas and remove unnecessary manual work. But continue investing just as heavily in the skills that technology cannot easily replicate judgement, curiosity, communication, commercial thinking, creativity and the ability to understand people. The marketers who succeed in the AI era won’t necessarily be the ones who use the most AI. They’ll be the ones who know how to use it with purpose.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ COMMVAULT

MAINTAINING BUSINESS CONTINUITY WITH COMMVAULT YAHYA KASSAB, SENIOR DIRECTOR AND GM: KSA & GULF COMMVAULT, OUTLINES CYBERSECURITY BEST PRACTICES AND THE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS ON DISPLAY AT GISEC 2026 IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW.

usiness continuity depends on an organisation’s ability to restore trusted data and critical operations when cyber defences are breached. For UAE enterprises expanding their use of AI, recovery readiness must also address data governance, identity protection and the risks introduced by autonomous agents. Yahya Kassab, Senior Director and GM, KSA & Gulf, Commvault, discusses the company’s cyber resilience focus at GISEC Global 2026 and its Resilience Operations (ResOps) approach, which brings together data security, identity, recovery, people and processes. In this exclusive interview, Kassab outlines practical steps organisations can take to strengthen preparedness, test recovery capabilities and sustain essential services through increasingly complex disruptions. Interview Excerpts What did Commvault showcase at GISEC Global 2026? At GISEC Global 2026, we were focused on how organisations can move beyond cyber protection towards true cyber resilience. We showcased our integrated

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resilience, AI capabilities and ResOps approach, with a strong emphasis on recovery readiness, and highlight the regional initiatives that further strengthen preparedness and recovery. As the threat landscape grows more complex, recovery speed, AI-driven resilience and operational readiness are becoming increasingly critical to maintaining business continuity. With cyberattack volumes continuing to rise across the UAE, what are the most significant changes you are seeing in the ecosystem, scale and sophistication of threats targeting organisations today? The UAE’s pace of digital transformation makes it an increasingly attractive target for cyberattacks, with threats growing in both volume and sophistication. At Commvault, we work with organisations across government, financial services and the private sector to strengthen cyber resilience alongside compliance. Security remains essential, but no defence is infallible. That is why organisations must look beyond prevention and prioritise recovery, ensuring they can restore trusted data quickly and maintain critical operations when an attack gets through. We hear a lot about AI as an opportunity.

What is the flip side, and are UAE businesses prepared for it? AI is now fundamental to digital transformation, but the same capabilities that make businesses more efficient are also lowering the barrier for attackers and enabling threats to scale faster. At the same time, AI is generating significantly more data across increasingly complex environments. With Dubai expecting half of its operations to run on agentic AI within two years, organisations must focus not only on protecting data, but also governing access, understanding where it resides and building a clear strategy for recovery when disruption occurs. What best practices should organisations adopt when implementing AI-related cybersecurity solutions? Organisations should start with data. They need to understand what they hold, classify it and govern who or what can access it before it reaches an AI model or agent. Identity is equally critical, particularly as autonomous agents introduce more non-human identities into the environment. Nine in ten attacks target Active Directory, and every AI agent adds a new, non-human identity to protect. Finally, organisations should assume breaches will happen

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Yahya Kassab, Senior Director and GM: KSA & Gulf Commvault.

and continuously test recovery. At Commvault, we bring these elements together through Resilience Operations, or ResOps, aligning data security, identity, recovery, people and processes around sustained operational resilience. Looking ahead to 2027, how should UAE organisations rethink their approach

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to cyber resilience to stay operational through increasingly complex disruptions? A future-ready strategy is less about predicting every attack and more about recovering cleanly and quickly from the unexpected. That means making isolated recovery and air gapping standard practice, maintaining immutable copies

of critical data, treating identity as a Tier 0 system, defining the minimum viable business, and continuously testing recovery in cleanroom environments. Resilience Operations, or ResOps, brings these capabilities together so organisations can restore critical operations in the right order and at speed.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ AMIVIZ

EMBEDDING SECURITY INTO FOUNDATIONS OF ENTERPRISE AI RAMKUMAR BALAKRISHNAN, CEO OF AMIVIZ, DISCUSSES THE CYBER FIRST APPROACH, AI-DRIVEN THREATS AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNANCE, IDENTITY AND HUMAN RESILIENCE IN SECURING ENTERPRISES.

ybersecurity strategies are being reshaped by AI-driven threats, identity sprawl, regulatory complexity and growing data sovereignty requirements. Organisations must now embed security across their architecture while strengthening governance, compliance and human resilience. In an interview with Security Advisor Middle East, Ramkumar Balakrishnan, CEO of AmiViz, discusses the company’s Cyber First approach, the risks posed by GenAI abuse and the growing convergence of AI and cybersecurity strategies. What does “Cyber First” mean in practice for your organisation’s roadmap this year? Cyber First means security is not an additional layer. It is the foundation upon which everything else is built. Every new practice we launch, including sovereign cloud, agentic AI and data resilience, is architected with security embedded from the outset. In practical terms, every solution team includes dedicated security engineers, compliance requirements are mapped before deployment, and zerotrust principles are applied by default. Cyber First is more than a philosophy for

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AmiViz. It is a build standard that guides how we design and deliver every solution. Which emerging threat worries you most right now: AI-driven deepfakes, GenAI abuse or next-generation ransomware? GenAI abuse concerns me most because it democratises sophisticated cyberattacks. It has removed the traditional skills barrier. A highly targeted and convincing phishing campaign that once required the capabilities of a nation-state actor can now be created using a laptop and a prompt. Nextgeneration ransomware is destructive, while deepfakes pose a serious threat to identity and trust. However, GenAI abuse can operate at unprecedented scale, making it particularly dangerous. Organisations that remain resilient will be those that treat human behaviour as a critical security control rather than simply a source of risk. What is one prediction you would make for the cybersecurity landscape over the next 12 months? Autonomous AI agents will become both the most powerful security tool and the most dangerous attack vector. Defenders will deploy agentic AI to detect, respond

to, and contain threats at machine speed. Cybercriminals will use the same technology to probe systems, adapt their tactics and breach organisations equally quickly. Organisations must establish effective governance for AI before adversaries exploit gaps in its adoption. Cybersecurity and AI strategy will become inseparable in 2026. It will no longer be possible to develop one without considering the other. Cybersecurity continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. What are the biggest security challenges organisations in the Middle East are facing today, and how are you helping customers address them? Organisations across the Middle East face four significant challenges. Identity sprawl is increasing as hybrid working and cloud adoption expand attack surfaces faster than many security teams can monitor them. AIaccelerated threats are also evolving beyond the capabilities of traditional signature-based defences. Regulatory complexity presents another major challenge. Requirements such as the UAE Personal Data Protection Law, Saudi Arabia’s National Cybersecurity Authority Essential Cybersecurity

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Controls and various sector-specific mandates create compliance obligations for which many enterprises remain underprepared. Data sovereignty is also becoming a boardlevel priority, with leaders demanding greater clarity about where sensitive information resides and who can access it. AmiViz addresses these challenges through architecture-first engagements that embed security within every solution. Compliance mapping is incorporated into each deployment, particularly for government and financial services customers. Our presales and post-sales engineers remain involved through go-live and beyond, providing customers with sustained technical support. Our vendoragnostic, consultative model allows us to recommend technologies based on the customer’s specific security requirements rather than focusing solely on product sales. Artificial intelligence is reshaping both cyber defence and cyber threats. How do you see AI changing the cybersecurity landscape over the next 12 to 18 months? AI will accelerate both attacks and defensive responses, forcing organisations to reconsider their security architecture. Cloud adoption has already weakened the traditional perimeter, making it essential to secure the entire architecture rather than focus solely on perimeter protection. Identity will become the new security control plane. Many breach investigations ultimately trace back to a compromised identity, making zero-trust identity frameworks a necessity rather than an option. Organisations must also stop treating regulatory compliance as a substitute for cybersecurity. Meeting the requirements of frameworks such as the NCA ECC or the UAE PDPL may satisfy regulators, but it does not automatically create resilience. Enterprises should build their security programmes around

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Ramkumar Balakrishnan, CEO, AmiViz.

the threats they face and subsequently map those controls to the relevant regulatory frameworks. Security operations must also become AI-ready. Cyber threats are moving at machine speed, making human-speed detection and response increasingly inadequate. Security operations centres that cannot use AI effectively risk giving adversaries a significant advantage. Data sovereignty will remain

a board-level priority across the region. Organisations must understand where sensitive information resides, who can access it and which jurisdiction governs it. Investment in people will be equally important. Even the most sophisticated zero-trust architecture can fail when an employee responds incorrectly to a convincing attack. Security culture must therefore be recognised as a fundamental control.

OCTOBER 2026

GISEC GLOBAL 2026

/ SECLORE

SECLORE ELEVATES PERSISTENT DATA PROTECTION FOR AI-DRIVEN ENTERPRISES JUSTIN ENDRES, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER AT SECLORE, EXPLAINS WHY PERSISTENT DATA PROTECTION, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS, AND REGIONAL INVESTMENT ARE CENTRAL TO SECURING ENTERPRISE AI AND CLOUD ADOPTION.

I and cloud adoption are fundamentally reshaping how enterprises create, access, share and protect sensitive information across increasingly complex digital environments. Growing use of generative AI tools has introduced new risks, particularly when employees move confidential data beyond traditional organisational boundaries. In this interview, Justin Endres, Chief Revenue Officer at Seclore, explains why persistent data protection has become a board-level priority and examines the challenges preventing organisations from executing security strategies consistently. He also discusses the role of strategic partners in addressing complex customer requirements and highlights the growing importance of the Middle East and Africa to Seclore’s global expansion plans. Interview excerpts What business risks are driving enterprise leaders to place data security higher on the corporate agenda? AI adoption and the rapid expansion of cloud environments are among the leading factors. Employees increasingly use AI tools in their daily work, creating new risks around identities and sensitive information. Protecting intellectual property, personally

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identifiable information and other critical digital assets has therefore become a major enterprise priority.

stays inside the organisation or travels beyond its boundaries.

How can CISOs demonstrate the business value of persistent data protection to boards and senior leaders? CISOs can demonstrate value through two key areas: regulatory compliance and measurable protection of sensitive digital assets. Boards need assurance that the organisation meets its compliance obligations while safeguarding intellectual property, personally identifiable information and other critical data. Persistent protection also enables organisations to adopt AI more securely.

How are strategic partners helping Seclore accelerate adoption and address complex customer requirements? Seclore has built long-standing relationships with its partner community. Partners provide extensive market reach, strong customer relationships and an in-depth understanding of the wider technology projects supporting each organisation’s goals. Such expertise enables Seclore to address complex requirements and extend its data security capabilities across customer environments.

What prevents organisations from translating data security strategies into consistent enterprise-wide execution? A major barrier is an incomplete understanding of how employees access, use and share data, particularly when adopting different AI tools. Traditional security strategies focused on protecting information within the organisational perimeter and during external collaboration. Organisations must now prevent employees from inadvertently entering sensitive information into large language models and other AI applications. Consistent protection must remain attached to the data, whether it

What role will the Middle East and Africa play in Seclore’s wider global growth strategy? The Middle East and Africa represent an important part of Seclore’s global growth strategy. Seclore has invested heavily in the region over the past 15 years and sees continued opportunities across the GCC and Africa. Growing investment in AI, GPUs and digital infrastructure is strengthening the region’s position as a global technology hub. This momentum gives the Middle East and Africa an opportunity to establish robust cybersecurity practices while their digital ecosystems continue to develop.

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Justin Endres, Chief Revenue Officer, Seclore.

CONSISTENT PROTECTION MUST REMAIN ATTACHED TO THE DATA, WHETHER IT STAYS INSIDE THE ORGANISATION OR TRAVELS BEYOND ITS BOUNDARIES.

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OCTOBER 2026

INTERVIEW

/ ROCKWELL AUTOMATION

AI RAISES STAKES FOR OT CYBERSECURITY RESILIENCE NAMAN TALDAR OF ROCKWELL AUTOMATION EXPLAINS WHY ASSET VISIBILITY, RISK-BASED INVESTMENT, AND PROACTIVE SECURITY PROGRAMMES ARE CRITICAL TO PROTECTING INDUSTRIAL OPERATIONS

rtificial intelligence is accelerating cyber threats across operational technology environments by making sophisticated attack techniques more accessible and scalable. Industrial organisations must also contend with ageing assets, fragmented architectures, limited visibility and the potentially severe operational and financial impact of plant downtime. Naman Taldar, Regional Lead – OT Cybersecurity at Rockwell Automation, discusses with Security Advisor Middle East how organisations can strengthen asset visibility, adopt proactive riskbased security programmes and align cybersecurity investment with operational resilience. Responsible for OT cybersecurity consulting and business development across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Taldar brings more than 15 years of IT and OT industry experience, including work on critical infrastructure and defence projects. Interview excerpts How is AI lowering the barrier to attacking operational technology (OT) systems? Artificial intelligence is changing the

OCTOBER 2026

economics of cyberattacks. Historically, targeting industrial environments required specialised knowledge of operational technology, industrial protocols and plant operations. Today, AI can help automate many aspects of reconnaissance, vulnerability research, social engineering and malware development, allowing less sophisticated threat actors to conduct more advanced attacks. AI can also accelerate the speed at which attackers identify weaknesses, generate convincing phishing campaigns, or adapt malware to different environments. For industrial organisations, that means threats can emerge faster and at greater scale than in the past. At the same time, AI is not creating entirely new risks. It is amplifying existing ones. Many OT environments still contain aging assets, fragmented architectures, and systems that were not originally designed with cybersecurity in mind. As a result, organisations should focus less on specific AI-driven attack scenarios and more on strengthening cyber resilience overall. That means improving visibility, reducing vulnerabilities, implementing defense-in-depth strategies, and ensuring they can detect, respond to, and recover from incidents quickly.

How important is asset visibility in managing OT cyber risk, and why do organisations continue to struggle with understanding what is actually connected within their industrial environments? Asset visibility is foundational to any effective OT cybersecurity program. Before an organisation can assess risk, prioritise investments or respond to threats, it must understand what assets exist within the environment and how those assets interact. The challenge is that industrial environments are often a diverse mix of many solutions. Very often, facilities operate equipment from multiple vendors spanning several decades. Assets may have been added during expansion projects, inherited through acquisitions, or maintained by different teams over time. In many cases, documentation has not kept up with operational changes. Unlike traditional IT environments, OT assets often include controllers, drives, sensors, engineering workstations and other specialised devices that are not always visible through conventional IT security tools. As connectivity increases across plants and enterprises, maintaining an accurate asset inventory becomes even more difficult. Without comprehensive visibility, organisations may not know which systems are vulnerable, outdated

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Naman Taldar, Business Lead, OT Cybersecurity, Rockwell Automation.

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OCTOBER 2026

INTERVIEW

/ ROCKWELL AUTOMATION

or critical to production. Asset visibility therefore becomes the basis for risk prioritisation, vulnerability management, compliance efforts and incident response planning. Organisations cannot effectively protect assets they do not know they have. How can organisations move from a reactive approach to OT cybersecurity toward a more proactive, risk-based security program? Too often industrial organisations still take a reactive approach to cybersecurity, addressing issues after vulnerabilities are discovered or incidents occur. While that may reduce immediate problems, it is not sufficient in today’s threat environment. A more mature approach begins with understanding business risk rather than focusing solely on technology. Organisations should identify their most critical assets, evaluate potential operational impacts, and prioritise security investments based on those risks. This requires a structured program built around continuous assessment, vulnerability management, governance, monitoring and incident preparedness. International frameworks such as IEC 62443 and NIST provide valuable guidance because they help organisations establish repeatable processes for improving security maturity over time. Proactive cybersecurity is also about recognising that risk cannot be eliminated completely. The goal is to continuously identify, quantify and prioritise risks so that limited resources are focused on the areas that will have the greatest impact on operational resilience. Organisations that treat cybersecurity as an ongoing lifecycle program, rather than a series of isolated projects, are typically better positioned to reduce risk and maintain business continuity. How should the potential cost of plant downtime influence OT security spending? Downtime is often one of the most

OCTOBER 2026

important factors when evaluating OT cybersecurity investments. While cybersecurity discussions sometimes focus on technical indicators such as vulnerabilities or alerts, industrial organisations ultimately measure risk in terms of operational consequences. A cyber incident can disrupt production, delay deliveries, impact product quality, compromise safety and create regulatory or contractual challenges. For many industrial operators, even a short interruption can result in costs that significantly exceed the investment required to strengthen cybersecurity controls beforehand. This does not mean organisations should pursue cybersecurity spending without limits. Rather, security investments should be evaluated against the potential operational and financial impacts of disruption. The most effective programs are those that connect cybersecurity priorities directly to business objectives such as availability, safety, productivity and resilience. When cybersecurity is viewed through the lens of operational continuity, it becomes easier to justify initiatives that improve visibility, reduce exposure to threats, enhance monitoring and accelerate recovery after an incident. What balance should companies maintain between investing in OT

cybersecurity and managing operational costs? Organisations should avoid viewing cybersecurity and operational efficiency as competing priorities. In industrial environments, they are increasingly interconnected. The most successful organisations focus on risk-based investment strategies. Instead of attempting to address every possible threat, they identify the areas of greatest operational significance and direct resources accordingly. This allows them to improve security while maintaining financial discipline. Organisations should also recognise that cybersecurity spending is not limited to technology purchases. Investments in governance, staff training, asset management, incident preparedness and managed security services can often deliver significant value and help address resource constraints. The objective is not to achieve perfect security. The objective is to build resilient operations that can continue to function safely and productively despite a constantly evolving threat landscape. When cybersecurity investments are aligned with operational priorities, regulatory requirements, and business risk, organisations are better positioned to protect both their operations and their long-term competitiveness.

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CISO50 & Future Security Awards 2026 CISO50 & Future Security Awards 2026 will bring together the region’s cybersecurity community to recognise outstanding leadership, innovation and excellence in enterprise security. The event will celebrate influential CISOs, high-performing security teams, pioneering technology providers and women making an impact in cybersecurity, while spotlighting the strategies shaping a more resilient digital future across the Middle East.

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INTERVIEW

/ iConnect

ICONNECT BRINGS INFRASTRUCTURE AND CYBERSECURITY TOGETHER TO POWER ENTERPRISE RESILIENCE DILIP PARYANI AND DALJEET SINGH DISCUSS ICONNECT’S GROWTH ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, EVOLVING CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS AND THE ROLE OF TECHNICAL EXPERTISE AND MANAGED SERVICES IN SUPPORTING SECURE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION.

usinesses across the Middle East and Africa are modernising their technology environments while managing growing cyber risks and operational complexity. Demand for integrated infrastructure, cybersecurity and ongoing technical support is shaping iConnect IT Business Solutions’ approach to serving enterprise, government and SME customers. Founded with a focus on infrastructure and security solutions for UAE enterprises, iConnect has expanded its offering to include professional and managed services, supported by a Dubai-based security operations centre delivering round-the-clock monitoring. Customer relationships, technology partnerships and in-house expertise remain central to its growth strategy. Dilip Paryani, COO and Co-Founder, and Daljeet Singh, Co-Founder and

OCTOBER 2026

Director of Business Development, discuss with Security Advisor Middle East the company’s evolution, the infrastructure demands emerging from AI, multi-cloud and connected technologies, and why resilience requires security to extend from initial design through daily operations. Interview excerpts What inspired the creation of iConnect IT Business Solutions, and how has the company evolved across the Middle East and Africa? Dilip Paryani: iConnect was built on a simple idea: businesses need a technology partner who understands their environment and stays accountable after the sale. We started with infrastructure and security solutions for enterprises in the UAE. Over time, we have grown into a full-service partner,

offering products, professional services and managed services. Today we support customers across the Middle East and Africa, and our SOC in Dubai delivers round-the-clock security services. Which strategic priorities have driven iConnect’s growth in the enterprise, government and SME markets? Dilip Paryani: Three priorities have guided us. First, we invest in a skilled technical team, because customers trust people who can deliver. Second, we choose technology partners carefully and build deep expertise in their platforms. Third, we adapt our services to each segment. Enterprises and government bodies need scale, compliance and resilience. SMEs need solutions that are simple, secure and affordable. Focusing on long-term relationships rather than one-off projects has also helped us grow steadily.

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How does iConnect differentiate itself as organisations increasingly seek integrated infrastructure, cybersecurity, AI and managed services? Dilip Paryani: Many customers do not want to manage several vendors for network, security, backup and monitoring. We bring these areas together under one team. Our engineers design, implement and then operate the solutions, so there is no gap between the project and daily operations. We also run our own SOC, which means we use the same standards for our customers that we apply to ourselves. What role do partnerships, in-house expertise and customer-focused innovation play in iConnect’s expansion strategy? Dilip Paryani: All three work together. Partnerships with leading technology vendors give us proven platforms. In-house expertise lets us design and support them properly. Customerfocused innovation means we build on real customer needs. We listen closely to recurring customer challenges and develop practical solutions around them. This approach helps us enter new markets with relevance and credibility. What is your long-term vision for iConnect as digitalisation accelerates across the region? Dilip Paryani: I want iConnect to be a trusted technology and security partner for organisations across the Middle East and Africa. As digitalisation grows, so do cyber risk and operational complexity.

Dilip Paryani, COO and Co-Founder, iConnect IT Business Solutions.

Our aim is to help customers adopt new technology with confidence, backed by strong security, resilience and skilled support. We will keep investing in our people, our managed services and our own products, while staying close to our customers.

WE BUILD SECURITY INTO EVERY STAGE, ENSURING THAT INFRASTRUCTURE, CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS, IDENTITIES, PRIVILEGED ACCESS AND MONITORING ARE ADDRESSED AS PART OF THE OVERALL DESIGN. www.tahawultech.com

How are AI, multi-cloud, OT and IoT technologies reshaping enterprise infrastructure and cybersecurity requirements? Daljeet Singh: These technologies are expanding the attack surface. Data and workloads now sit across several clouds, on-premises systems and connected devices. AI helps both defenders and attackers, so threats are faster and more convincing. OT and IoT devices were often not designed with security in mind, and they are now connected to corporate networks. Organisations therefore need stronger identity controls, network segmentation, continuous monitoring and clear visibility across all environments.

OCTOBER 2026

INTERVIEW

/ ROCKWELL AUTOMATION

OUR ENGINEERS DESIGN, IMPLEMENT AND THEN OPERATE THE SOLUTIONS, SO THERE IS NO GAP BETWEEN THE PROJECT AND DAILY OPERATIONS.

Daljeet Singh, Co-Founder and Director of Business Development, iConnect IT Business Solutions.

How can organisations across the Middle East and Africa build resilient, future-ready technology environments amid accelerating digital transformation? Daljeet Singh: Start with the basics: know your assets, secure identities and keep your systems patched. Then design for failure. That means tested backup and disaster recovery, redundancy for critical services and a clear incident response plan. Organisations should also adopt security that scales, such as centralised monitoring, zero-trust principles and privileged access management. Finally, they should invest in skills, because technology only works when the team can operate it well.

OCTOBER 2026

How does iConnect help customers modernise complex technology environments while maintaining security, resilience and operational efficiency? Daljeet Singh: We begin by understanding the customer’s current environment and business goals. Then we plan modernisation in stages, so critical services stay available. We build security into every stage, ensuring that infrastructure, cloud environments, identities, privileged access and monitoring are addressed as part of the overall design. We also design backup and disaster recovery to protect the business if something goes wrong. After go-live, our managed services team monitors and supports the environment, so customers get stability and efficiency over the long term.

How does DMARCS protect enterprises against domain spoofing, phishing and impersonation while improving legitimate email delivery? Daljeet Singh: DMARCS helps organisations set up and manage email authentication using SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These controls let receiving mail servers verify that a message really comes from the sender’s domain, and block those that do not. This reduces spoofing, phishing and brand impersonation. The platform also gives clear visibility into who is sending email on behalf of a domain, so organisations can find and fix legitimate senders that fail authentication. As a result, genuine emails reach the inbox more reliably. How will managed services and specialised technical skills influence the next phase of enterprise digital transformation? Daljeet Singh: Technology is becoming more complex, and skilled security and infrastructure professionals are hard to find and keep. Managed services give organisations access to expert teams and 24/7 monitoring without building everything in-house. Specialised skills in areas such as SIEM, cloud security, identity and backup will matter even more. Organisations that combine sound technology with strong operational support will be able to transform faster and with less risk.

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WEBINAR

/ ORANGE CYBERDEFENSE

ORANGE CYBERDEFENSE EXPERTS WARN AI IS ACCELERATING CYBER RISK AND ATTACK SPEED EXCLUSIVE CPI MEDIA GROUP WEBINAR WITH ORANGE BUSINESS AND ORANGE CYBERDEFENSE EXPLORED HOW AI, OFFENSIVE SECURITY RESEARCH AND THREAT INTELLIGENCE ARE RESHAPING CYBER RESILIENCE ACROSS IT AND OT ENVIRONMENTS.

rtificial intelligence is transforming cybersecurity faster than many organisations are prepared for, according to experts from Orange Cyberdefense, who warned that the speed of modern attacks is shrinking response windows and forcing enterprises to rethink traditional security strategies. Speaking during the exclusive VIP webinar titled Intelligence, Threats and AI – How to Successfully Make it all Work for IT and OT, hosted by CPI Media Group in collaboration with Orange Business and Orange Cyberdefense, Leon Jacobs, CTO at Orange Cyberdefense SensePost, and Michiel Bekker, Head of Advisory Services at Orange Cyberdefense ZA, discussed how AI-driven tools, threat intelligence and offensive security research are reshaping modern cyber defence strategies. The webinar brought together cybersecurity leaders and IT decisionmakers to examine the operational impact of AI on cybersecurity, including AI-driven pentesting, evolving attack

OCTOBER 2026

Michiel Bekker, Head of Advisory Services, Orange Cyberdefense.

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surfaces, offensive security research, and the growing need for organisations to combine automation with human expertise. The opening the session highlighted the company’s regional presence across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while emphasising the importance of bringing global cybersecurity expertise to organisations in the Middle East. Jacobs explained that AI has become a force multiplier within offensive security operations, particularly in penetration testing and threat analysis. He noted that AI-assisted tools are helping junior analysts rapidly understand unfamiliar technologies, protocols and environments, while enabling experienced researchers to automate repetitive processes and accelerate vulnerability discovery. “Everyone suddenly has a smart person they can interact with,” Jacobs said, describing how AI systems are enabling teams to brainstorm attack surfaces, analyse technologies and prototype exploit paths significantly faster than traditional approaches. Bekker stressed that while AI is improving efficiency, it cannot replace human expertise or fix weak cybersecurity fundamentals. He cautioned organisations against assuming AI is a standalone solution to security challenges. “AI on its own is not a magic bullet,” Bekker said. “People without AI augmentation will struggle in the long term, but AI also accelerates broken processes if organisations do not address their fundamentals first.” A major focus of the discussion centred on autonomous pentesting and AI-driven attack simulation tools. The speakers explained that while AI agents can accelerate vulnerability testing and reasoning processes, human oversight remains critical for contextual understanding, validation, and decisionmaking. The session also explored how AI is shortening the gap between vulnerability

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Leon Jacobs, CTO, Orange Cyberdefense SensePost.

disclosure and exploitation. Jacobs noted that AI-assisted research is enabling attackers and defenders alike to move from identifying a vulnerability to building working exploit code in a fraction of the time previously required. Beyond AI strategy, the webinar featured a detailed showcase of offensive security research conducted by the Orange Cyberdefense SensePost team. Jacobs demonstrated how researchers successfully manipulated no-touch infrared access sensors using custombuilt hardware capable of triggering doors remotely by replaying infrared signals. The research highlighted how seemingly simple physical systems can introduce unexpected security risks when authentication mechanisms are absent. The webinar also examined vulnerabilities discovered in widely used PC utility and driver management software from major hardware vendors. Jacobs outlined how insecure implementation practices in pre-installed “bloatware” applications could potentially enable remote code execution or privilege escalation attacks.

Both speakers, during the webinar, repeatedly emphasised the importance of balancing AI innovation with practical risk management, governance, and security hygiene. Bekker noted that many organisations still struggle with longstanding security fundamentals such as patch management, access control, and secure development practices, despite the rapid emergence of AI-related threats. During the audience Q&A session, the speakers highlighted the growing need for organisations to curate threat intelligence carefully and avoid information overload. The expertise recommended using AI to augment existing security operations and contextualise risks specific to individual environments rather than relying solely on automation. Concluding the webinar, Orange Cyberdefense reiterated its focus on tailored cybersecurity strategies aligned to each organisation’s business priorities, operational risks and technology environments across both IT and OT ecosystems.

OCTOBER 2026

OPINION

/ TRELLIX

RESILIENCE PUSH EXPANDS IT/OT FAULT LINE ACROSS CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE VIBIN SHAJU, VP, EMEA SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING, TRELLIX, EXAMINES HOW ACCELERATING IT/OT CONVERGENCE IS RESHAPING CYBER RISK ACROSS CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND WHY RESILIENCE STRATEGIES MUST EVOLVE ALONGSIDE STRONGER SECURITY CONTROLS.

perational technology (OT) environments have become prime targets across today’s threat landscape. Trellix research recorded 1.3 million detections across 155 unique campaigns targeting OT and industrial control system-linked environments between October 2025 and March 2026. More significantly, over 1,600 OTimpacting ransomware attacks were observed during the period, accounting for 29.5% of all ransomware activity. Such attacks are not focused on peripheral systems. Critical infrastructure supporting national stability is increasingly under pressure, particularly as geopolitical tensions across the Middle East place extraordinary strain on supply chains, energy security and infrastructure continuity. Defending OT environments has long been a complex challenge, even during more stable periods. Many OT systems were not designed with modern cybersecurity threats in mind, while integration with IT systems has historically been cautious. Rapid transformation has changed that balance significantly. Faced with disruption ranging from rerouted shipping lanes to fluctuating energy demand and supply shortages, organisations across critical sectors are accelerating digital transformation to strengthen efficiency and resilience.

OCTOBER 2026

Resilience-driven transformation A wave of IT-driven innovation is now reaching traditionally isolated OT environments. Remote access solutions have expanded to maintain operations across distributed sites. Enterprise resource planning systems are becoming more tightly integrated with manufacturing execution systems to optimise production in real time. Cloud platforms and data analytics are also being deployed to improve visibility and decision-making across the value chain. Paradox at IT/OT perimeter A clear paradox has emerged. Measures intended to enhance resilience are also introducing new vulnerabilities. IT and OT convergence is expanding the enterprise attack surface while shifting the battleground towards the boundary between both domains. The IT/OT interface has consequently become one of the most strategically significant and vulnerable layers within modern industrial environments. Threat actors have recognised that directly targeting low-level controllers within OT environments can be difficult and high risk. Attention is therefore shifting towards Level 3 and Level 4 systems, where enterprise and operational networks intersect. Such systems run on more familiar technologies, often carry IT-like

vulnerabilities and provide a far more scalable entry point. Once compromised, however, they can offer a direct pathway to highly kinetic outcomes, including manipulation of production data, disabling of safety systems or large-scale operational disruption. Virtual attacks, real-world impact Attack techniques increasingly reflect this shift. Trellix recorded 9,705 PowerShell detections during the reporting period, alongside widespread use of scheduled tasks, system discovery, file deletion and the disabling or modification of security tools. Bespoke OT exploits are not always required. Standard IT attack techniques are increasingly being repurposed to damaging effect across operational environments. A pivot from IT into OT often begins with something far more conventional. Attackers may exploit public-facing applications such as VPN appliances and web servers or establish an initial foothold through spearphishing. Stolen credentials and familiar administrative tools can then support lateral movement and reconnaissance as attackers identify OT-adjacent systems and cross network boundaries. Once access to operational environments has been secured, legitimate industrial protocols such as Modbus and IEC-104

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can be abused to manipulate systems. Detection becomes especially challenging because attackers increasingly rely on technologies, credentials and pathways already present within the environment. Integration: New pivot point Integration points underpinning modern efficiency initiatives create another area of concern. Software connecting ERP systems with manufacturing execution systems (MES) has become a high-privilege pivot point into core OT environments. Such platforms are designed to enable seamless data flow between business and production layers. Greater connectivity, however, also creates a direct bridge that attackers can exploit. A vulnerability within an enterprise application or a remote code execution flaw in a connected system can quickly escalate into control over operational processes. Organisations therefore need to fundamentally rethink how integration layers are secured. Network segmentation must be rigorously enforced, supported by clearly defined security zones and tightly controlled access points between IT and OT environments. Industrial firewalls and data diodes can help prevent unauthorised lateral movement, although such controls must be complemented by continuous monitoring capable of understanding both IT and OT protocols. Reducing complexity should remain the priority rather than adding another layer of disconnected tools. Better integrated and correlated monitoring can close visibility gaps between systems that attackers currently exploit. Securing hyper-connected access Remote access demands an equally disciplined zero-trust approach. Every connection, whether from an internal user, a third-party vendor or a longstanding systems integrator, should be treated as untrusted by default. Multifactor authentication, time-bound

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Vibin Shaju, VP, EMEA Solutions Engineering, Trellix.

credentials and full session monitoring are essential to reducing the risk of compromise. Remote connectivity has become critical to resilience, yet it cannot remain the easiest pathway available to attackers. An AI security fabric designed to operate across cloud, on-premises, air-gapped and OT environments can provide security teams with the visibility and context needed to detect anomalous access before it escalates, regardless of where the connection originates. Supply chain dependencies add further complexity. OT environments rely on a diverse ecosystem of vendors, each capable of introducing vulnerabilities through software updates, remote maintenance or embedded components. Software bills of materials, digital signature validation and strict vendor accountability can no longer be regarded as optional best practices. Such measures have become baseline

operational requirements. Expanding supplier networks may help organisations mitigate disruption, although security standards must extend beyond the organisation’s own perimeter if resilience strategies are to remain effective. Security and resilience converge Resilience and security can no longer be treated as parallel priorities. Speed alone will not deliver either objective. Defence at machine speed becomes effective only when supported by intelligence and context. Speed without context produces noise rather than resilience. The IT/OT boundary is no longer simply a point of integration. It has become the frontline of cyber risk. Attackers are increasingly motivated to translate digital compromise into physical disruption, making protection of this boundary more critical than ever.

OCTOBER 2026

OPINION

/ BEYONDTRUST

IDENTITY BECOMES RANSOMWARE BATTLEGROUND LEN NOE, SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT AT BEYONDTRUST, EXPLAINS WHY MACHINE-SPEED ATTACKS ARE SHIFTING CYBER DEFENCE TOWARDS IDENTITY, PRIVILEGE AND CONTINUOUS TRUST VALIDATION

or more than two decades, enterprise cybersecurity has measured success by one overriding objective: reducing the time between compromise and containment. Researchers’ disclosure of the JADEPUFFER campaign challenged that assumption. Believed to be the first documented end-to-end ransomware attack orchestrated by an autonomous large language model, JADEPUFFER did not introduce a revolutionary attack chain. Every stage of the intrusion relied on techniques security professionals have investigated for years — exploiting vulnerable applications, harvesting credentials, escalating privileges and moving laterally — while removing much of the human delay between each step. Such a distinction matters because enterprise security has quietly treated time as defensive control. Organisations

have consequently invested heavily in reducing mean time to detect and mean time to respond. Both metrics remain valuable, but they assume defenders have sufficient time to observe, investigate and intervene before an attacker reaches critical systems. Offensive operations capable of eliminating human latency can shrink the available response window, regardless of how much telemetry an organisation collects or how many alerts its security operations centre can process. One uncomfortable lesson challenges a deeply held industry assumption: faster detection alone is no longer enough if attackers can move through an environment faster than defenders can validate trust. Competitive advantage shifts away from merely seeing an attack sooner and towards limiting what an attacker can accomplish after gaining initial access.

IDENTITY HAS EFFECTIVELY BECOME THE CONTROL PLANE OF THE MODERN ENTERPRISE, WHILE PRIVILEGE HAS BECOME ONE OF ITS MOST CONSEQUENTIAL SECURITY VARIABLES. 94

OCTOBER 2026

Identity becomes core infrastructure Most organisations still think of identity as a security function. In reality, it has become a business function on which security increasingly depends. Every application, cloud service, API, container, workload, administrator, contractor, employee and, increasingly, every AI agent operates because an identity has been granted authority to perform an action. Identity has effectively become the control plane of the modern enterprise, while privilege has become one of its most consequential security variables. Every authenticated session, API call, service account, automation workflow and machine identity inherits some level of authority. Such authority helps explain why many major breaches follow remarkably similar patterns despite using different initial access techniques. An unpatched vulnerability, successful phishing email or exposed credential may provide the first foothold, but such events explain only how an attacker entered the environment. Standing administrative privileges, unmanaged service accounts, embedded API keys, stale credentials and excessive

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Len Noe is a Solutions Architect at BeyondTrust, Transhuman, Podcaster, International Cyber Security Speaker, Author, Technical Evangelist, and Biohacker with 11 implanted microchips. A former blackhat with more than 30 years in technology, Noe has presented in over 73 countries and is featured in the documentary I Am Machine, which premiered at DEF CON 2025.

Len Noe, Solutions Architect, BeyondTrust.

cloud permissions become pathways capable of transforming an isolated compromise into an enterprise-wide incident. Attack surfaces are no longer defined solely by internet-facing systems. Every trusted identity capable of extending authority beyond its original purpose now contributes to exposure. Design for machine speed Security teams should no longer ask only whether an attacker can gain access. Greater emphasis must be placed on how much authority an attacker inherits once access is achieved. Such a distinction separates resilient organisations from vulnerable ones. Organisations should continue

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investing in faster detection, richer telemetry and more capable security operations. Such capabilities remain essential, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. Security architectures must assume an attacker gaining an initial foothold may begin exploiting trust relationships almost immediately. Primary objectives must therefore extend beyond simply detecting compromise. Security controls must ensure one compromised account, workload or system cannot rapidly translate into enterprise-wide control. Identity should be treated as infrastructure rather than administration. Standing privilege

should be reduced instead of being reviewed only periodically. Trust must be continuously validated rather than assuming authentication alone proves authorisation. Equivalent governance must also extend to machine identities, service accounts, APIs and autonomous agents, areas organisations have traditionally managed differently from privileged human users. For years, enterprise security measured success by how quickly defenders could respond after an intrusion began. Machine-speed attacks are rewritten on that scoreboard. JADEPUFFER may not ultimately be remembered simply because an autonomous AI agent played a role in a ransomware campaign. Greater significance comes from demonstrating how familiar attack techniques can operate without traditional human pacing. Technology will evolve, new malware families will emerge and different vulnerabilities will replace today’s exploits. Details will change, but the underlying lesson will endure: attackers do not simply attack organisations; they exploit trust. Organisations positioned to thrive over the next decade will not necessarily have the largest security budgets or most sophisticated AI. Stronger resilience will come from recognising identity, privilege and trust as operational foundations of enterprise security and architecting environments accordingly.

OCTOBER 2026

OPINION

/ FORTINET

CLOUD INTRUSIONS NOW MOVE AT MACHINE SPEED THE 2026 CLOUD-NATIVE THREAT LANDSCAPE REPORT REVEALS THE INDUSTRIALISED ATTACK PATHS AND DEFENSIVE PRIORITIES THAT MATTER MOST.

loud-native environments are vital to AI initiatives and business transformation. That also makes them high-value targets. Fortinet FortiCNAPP intelligence shows that threat actors are now using automated attack workflows to identify vulnerable deployments, breach them, and quickly turn access into profit. The 2026 Cloud-Native Threat Landscape Report draws exclusively on FortiCNAPP intelligence to examine the scale of adversary activity, the paths attackers use, the gaps they exploit, and the actions security leaders must now take to strengthen cloud resilience and accelerate defender velocity. The findings reveal the global scale of intrusion attempts: 150 million reconnaissance events, 2.3 billion brute-force attempts, and 1.7 billion exploitation attempts. These figures show that cloud intrusion is no longer a series of isolated efforts. Attackers continuously map environments, test credentials, exploit exposed services, and rapidly advance toward their objectives. AI and Automation Have Accelerated the Cloud Attack Chain Threat actors are using AI and automation to identify vulnerabilities,

OCTOBER 2026

exploit exposed services, and achieve their objectives at unprecedented speed and scale. For defenders, the primary consequence is a shrinking response window. Time-to-exploit has fallen from weeks to hours, leaving less time to detect and respond before material business impact occurs. This speed is reshaping the cloud security operating model. Periodic assessments and siloed alerts cannot match industrialised, AI-driven adversary workflows. Security teams must also adopt AI-driven, automated workflows across the full application lifecycle—from code to cloud, identities, workloads, AI systems, data, supply chains, and runtime—to prevent, protect, and respond at machine speed. Identity Compromise Now the Dominant Intrusion Path Although the report identifies some regional differences, cloud intrusions largely follow a consistent global pattern, with identity compromise by far the dominant intrusion vector. Attackers use stolen, exposed, or misused credentials to gain access through legitimate access paths, often making their activity hard to distinguish from normal user behavior. For security leaders, identity risk must be treated as a crucial part of

the cloud attack surface. While strong authentication remains critical, it is only one layer. Organisations also need continuous visibility into effective permissions, excessive privileges, risky relationships among identities and resources, and unusual behavior after access is granted. A valid credential should not give an attacker an unobstructed path to sensitive data, services, or administrative control. Missing Security Controls Accelerate Adversary Speed The report also highlights that cloud environments repeatedly lack critical security controls. The pressure to release applications and AI services quickly can lead to misconfigurations, excessive permissions, exposed services, and visibility gaps. Each gap reduces the work adversaries need to move from initial access to impact. These findings reinforce the value of consistent cyber hygiene across all cloud environments. Security controls must follow workloads from development through deployment and runtime, while teams continuously assess which weaknesses are exposed, reachable, and exploitable. This context helps organisations focus on the greatest risks.

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Kalle Bjorn, Sr Director Systems Engineering, Fortinet .

Cloud Services Expand Monetisation Options While data exfiltration remains a top objective, many threat actors focus solely on hijacking cloud resources for direct financial gain. FortiCNAPP intelligence shows a consistent pattern of abuse of cloud email services, including Amazon Simple Email Service, cryptomining, and misuse of AI services such as Amazon Bedrock. This has immediate operational and financial consequences. An unexpected increase in cloud, email, compute, or AI service consumption may be more than a cost-management issue. It can signal compromised cloud environments. AIpowered behavioral anomaly detection is now crucial for helping teams identify and contain abuse early, before costs and exposure can escalate. Three Priorities for Breaking the Cloud Attack Chain The report highlights three key priorities to narrow the widening gap between the speed of cloud intrusion and defender response:

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• Continuously identify and prioritise exploitable risk: Continuous threat exposure management aggregates signals from cloud accounts, development pipelines, data stores, repositories, identities, and runtime activity. FortiCNAPP applies specialised AI models to this unified data lake of context, helping teams focus on top risks and active threats rather than getting lost in hundreds, if not thousands, of findings. • Apply AI-native security from code to runtime to response: Prevention, protection, detection, and response must span the full application lifecycle. Fortinet supports this approach with the Fortinet AI-Native Security Fabric, with FortiCNAPP for code risks, cloud platform security, and runtime workload protection; FortiGate, FortiAppSec Cloud, and FortiAIGate for adaptive runtime protection; and the Fortinet agentic SOC platform for accelerated detection and response. FortiDeceptor adds early warning deception to expose suspicious activity before an intruder reaches higher-

impact resources with zero false positives. • Validate resilience through active testing: Static checks cannot uncover every runtime weakness. AI-driven red teaming and dynamic application security testing help organisations identify exploitable paths before attackers do. FortiDAST, integrated with FortiCNAPP and FortiAppSec Cloud, extends this testing to generative AI applications by hunting for OWASP LLM Top 10 vulnerabilities. FortiAIGate also conducts stress and pen testing against AI systems. Strengthen Cloud Resilience without Slowing Innovation A key takeaway from the 2026 CloudNative Threat Landscape Report is that adversaries are turning cloud intrusion into a continuous, automated workflow. Your cloud security must operate the same way: dynamically reduce risk, close the security gaps that make compromise easier, watch for resource abuse, and use broad context to act quickly against the threats that matter most.

OCTOBER 2026

OPINION

/ MANAGEENGINE

WHY MIDDLE EAST ENTERPRISES MUST RETHINK DATA CONTROL

ata flows through cloud environments, third-party applications, AI tools, and infrastructure at a speed which often exceeds the governance systems designed to control it. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where regulators are simultaneously and independently making the rules more strict, this gap represents a business risk. A regulatory web, not a single rule Most organisations treat compliance like a simple task to complete. Once they’ve found the relevant regulation, they tick the box and carry on. However, the regulatory environment in the MENA region operates differently. It consists of a complex, multi-jurisdictional network, so doing business in two or three countries requires taking into account several regulatory frameworks at once. The UAE has established baseline requirements concerning the storage and processing of data that is related to the government in its National Cybersecurity Authority Cloud Computing Regulation. Saudi Arabia’s Personal Data Protection Law has its own rules regarding the transfer of data across borders. Egypt’s Personal Data Protection Law No. 151 includes requirements for data localisation in respect of sensitive categories. Moreover, in the UAE, sectorspecific requirements issued by the Dubai Health Authority and financial regulators add more layers of regulation. In the MENA region, there is no one compliance standard for an organisation

OCTOBER 2026

to meet. Compliance is plural, specific to the jurisdiction, and continuous. Geopolitics has entered the conversation Organisations in the MENA region are increasingly alert to a specific risk: that choosing a foreign cloud provider means accepting that a foreign government may have legal reach over their data. That awareness is reshaping vendor assessment across the region. Now the question of where data is physically stored is now intrinsically linked to the issue of which laws govern it. Data kept on servers located in a foreign jurisdiction is, by definition, open to the legal demands of that jurisdiction, including those relating to intelligence and law enforcement. For example, the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act provides that data held by United Statesbased companies can be obtained by US authorities no matter where their servers are physically located. Likewise, other major jurisdictions that export technology have similar extraterritorial measures.

Dhanusha S is an enterprise analyst at ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation, where she works at the intersection of technology, communications, and storytelling. She specialises in translating complex technology and industry trends into engaging stories for media and wider audiences.

For organisations in defence, finance, critical infrastructure, or government supply chains, the risk of their data being compelled by a foreign authority legally and without notice is not acceptable. Similarly, for enterprises that do not handle classified information, the reputational and contractual consequences of having data accessible by foreign authorities are now being closely examined by customers, partners, and auditors. Local infrastructure is necessary The usual response to both regulatory pressure and geopolitical risk is for organisations to transfer their data into local infrastructure. This is done in regional data centres, which are run in accordance with local laws and have their physical and logical controls documented and auditable. However, by moving their data to local soil, organisations are only partly protected. While the local infrastructure of a data centre ensures where data is stored, it does not dictate how data is transferred, who is responsible for processing it, what happens when it goes through a third-party AI tool, or whether the commitments made by the vendor can be relied upon. A database located in Riyadh or Dubai is sovereign in principle, but as soon as the data is taken in by a cloudbased productivity suite, a marketing platform, or a generative AI model with unclear training policies, sovereignty becomes conditional. That’s where an AI vendor’s

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data processing policy becomes important. The rapid uptake of AI tools throughout various areas of business, including customer service, document summarisation, and financial modelling, has created a new and mostly unexamined way in which data can be exposed. Companies should clearly and formally know, through contract, whether their data is used to train the models they interact with. The statement “We won’t use your data to train our models” must be a documented and auditable commitment, not just a footnote on a terms-of-service page that is altered every quarter. What continuous compliance requires MENA organisations that excel in data control regard sovereignty compliance as an operational function rather than an audit event. In practice, this involves a few specific actions: Keeping an up-to-date inventory of data flows. Not relying on a document that was put together two years ago but instead maintaining a dynamic map that is updated each time a new tool is brought on board or when a vendor modifies its architecture. Designating responsibility for monitoring changes in regulatory requirements in each of the MENA jurisdictions where an organisation operates. Reviewing vendor contracts on a regular schedule, not just when the contracts are due for renewal. A mandatory compliance check of the data processing policy of a new AI tool. Continuous audit documentation, so that whenever a regulator, customer, or procurement committee requests evidence, it can be provided within hours rather than weeks. Still playing catch up Even though progress is being made all over the region, most organisations still haven’t reached continuous, verified data

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Dhanusha S, Enterprise Analyst, ManageEngine.

sovereignty. In most cases, sovereignty compliance is seen as a requirement to meet rather than something that is built into the way the organisation operates. Yet the regulatory environment is changing more quickly than the internal governance programmes, and the landscape for AI tools is advancing even more rapidly. The issue isn’t one of awareness; most enterprise leaders understand the

importance of data sovereignty. It lies in achieving the necessary operational continuity to remain compliant as the regulatory and tooling environment continues to change. MENA enterprises must work to establish continuity using regional infrastructure, verified contractual commitments, AI policies that place customer data privacy first, and audit readiness that never shuts down.

OCTOBER 2026

RESEARCH

/ DELINEA

ROGUE AI RISK RISES AS 98% OF UAE ORGANISATIONS REPORT EXCESSIVE SENSITIVE DATA ACCESS DELINEA RESEARCH REVEALS MAJOR GAPS BETWEEN AI GOVERNANCE POLICIES AND ENFORCEMENT, WITH ONLY 16% OF UAE ORGANISATIONS ABLE TO IMMEDIATELY REVOKE AN AI TOOL’S CREDENTIALS AND TERMINATE ITS SESSION.

he UAE organisations are moving rapidly to establish policies governing artificial intelligence access, yet new Delinea research suggests those rules are not consistently translating into effective control over what AI tools and agents can do. Research conducted among IT and security leaders found that every UAE respondent said their organisation has a

Art Gilliland, CEO, Delinea.

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formal policy governing the data AI tools and agents may access. Despite that level of policy adoption, 98% reported confirmed or suspected instances where an AI tool accessed sensitive data beyond what its assigned task required. The figure compares with 87% across Delinea’s global survey sample and highlights a widening gap between governance policies and their enforcement.

Only 59% of UAE respondents said their organisation’s AI data-access policy is actively enforced, compared with 71% across the overall survey. “Written policy is only as good as an organisation’s ability to enforce it at the moment an AI agent acts,” said Art Gilliland, CEO of Delinea. “The UAE has clearly recognised the need to govern AI access, but the findings reveal what I call the fallacy of policy: assuming that defining what, an agent should be allowed to do is the same as controlling what it actually does. That distinction becomes critical when agents operate across systems and make decisions at machine speed.” Detection capabilities represent another significant concern. Seven in ten UAE organisations failed to detect their latest excessive-access incident either in real time or within 24 hours, compared with six in ten organisations across the overall sample. Delinea said the findings come as governments, technology companies and businesses assess the risks created by increasingly autonomous AI systems operating across interconnected environments. Commercial pressure may also be contributing to policy circumvention. Some 41% of UAE respondents said their organisations either allow employees and teams to find workarounds without formal approval or grant temporary

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access before conducting a later review when business demands require AI tools to move faster than established governance processes. Accountability presents a further challenge. While 98% of UAE respondents said approval from a named individual is required at least sometimes before an AI tool receives access to a new sensitive data source, only 35% can always trace a sensitive access event back to a named human authoriser. Limited traceability can make it difficult to establish responsibility for access decisions and determine ownership of the controls required to prevent future incidents. Response capabilities also appear constrained once problematic access has been identified. Only 16% of UAE respondents said their organisation possesses real-time controls capable of both revoking an AI tool’s credentials and terminating its session immediately. The figure is less than half the 35% recorded across the overall survey sample. “UAE organisations have already taken the first step by establishing policies and approval requirements, but policy alone cannot contain an agent operating at machine speed,” said Mortada Ayad, VP of Sales – META, Delinea. “The next priority is to enforce authorisation at the instant of action by limiting access to what the task requires, maintaining a defensible link to the

Mortada Ayad, VP of Sales – META, Delinea.

person who approved it, and terminating credentials and sessions immediately when the task ends or risk changes. This is how organisations can turn AI governance from a document into a working control.” Delinea’s 2026 Identity Security Report: The AI Enforcement Gap surveyed 2,004 IT and security leaders at organisations with 500 or more employees that were actively using or piloting AI. Respondents were drawn from Australia, Germany, India, Singapore, the UAE, UK and US, including 251 respondents from the UAE.

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OCTOBER 2026

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/ MICROSOFT DIGITAL DEFENSE REPORT

MICROSOFT REPORT FLAGS RISING CYBER RISK AS UAE SCALES AI SECURITY MICROSOFT’S 2026 DIGITAL DEFENSE REPORT RANKS THE UAE SIXTH GLOBALLY FOR CUSTOMER IMPACT FROM CYBER ACTIVITY, AS NEW PARTNERSHIPS EXPAND AI-POWERED DEFENCE CAPABILITIES ACROSS GOVERNMENT.

icrosoft has released its 2026 Digital Defense Report, highlighting how artificial intelligence, identity-based attacks and increasingly interconnected digital ecosystems are reshaping the global cybersecurity landscape. Published during Cyber Security Month, the report draws on Microsoft’s visibility across the global digital ecosystem and more than 165 trillion security signals processed each day. Three major shifts are defining cybersecurity in 2026, according to Microsoft: AI is accelerating both attacks and defence, identity remains a primary route for attackers seeking access to organisations, and cyber incidents are increasingly creating consequences beyond their original targets. The findings carry particular significance for the UAE as AI adoption expands across government, enterprises and critical infrastructure. Microsoft data shows the UAE ranked sixth globally among countries where customers were most frequently impacted by cyber activity during the first half of 2026. The country also

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ranked second in the Middle East and Africa. Growing AI adoption is creating new opportunities for innovation while simultaneously expanding the attack surface through additional identities, data sources, applications and access points. Microsoft is working with the UAE Cyber Security Council and Core42 to deploy MDASH, its AI-powered cybersecurity capability, across UAE government entities. The initiative is designed to help security teams identify vulnerabilities, prioritise risks and respond to emerging threats with greater speed and scale while supporting sovereign security, privacy and operational resilience requirements.

CYBERSECURITY CANNOT BE TREATED AS A SEPARATE LAYER ADDED AFTER TRANSFORMATION TAKES PLACE.”

Yazan Khasawneh, Director of Cyber Security at Microsoft UAE, said: “The UAE is entering a phase in which AI is becoming part of the operating model of government and business. Cybersecurity therefore cannot be treated as a separate layer added after transformation takes place. It has to be designed into the way organisations adopt AI, manage identities, protect data and maintain continuity from the outset.” “The latest Digital Defense Report shows why this matters, threats are moving faster and becoming more interconnected. Our focus is to help organisations build the security and resilience they need to innovate with confidence,” he added. AI reshapes cyber defence Microsoft’s report finds that AI is changing the dynamics on both sides of cybersecurity. Threat actors are increasingly using AI to operate faster and at greater scale, while defenders are deploying AI to accelerate threat detection, investigation and disruption. Expanded adoption of AI systems also introduces new identities, data flows and access points that organisations need to secure.

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Identity remains key target Despite increasingly sophisticated attack techniques, identity continues to be one of the most important areas of cyber defence. Attackers continue to exploit accounts, credentials and users to gain access to corporate environments, reinforcing the need for stronger authentication and greater protection of high-value identities. Microsoft recommends reducing reliance on passwords and strengthening identity security as organisations expand digital and AIenabled services.

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Cyber risk becomes connected Cyber incidents are increasingly extending beyond individual organisations. Compromise involving an identity, supplier, platform or service provider can create downstream consequences across businesses, sectors and geographical borders. The trend reinforces the importance of coordinated threat intelligence, publicprivate collaboration and stronger operational resilience. Microsoft recommends that organisations prioritise three areas:

protecting identities, responding faster and building resilience. Measures include strengthening authentication, accelerating detection and response, regularly testing incident-response plans and designing technology environments so critical operations can continue during a cyber disruption. For the UAE, the findings underline the growing importance of integrating cybersecurity directly into AI adoption strategies as government and industry accelerate digital transformation.

OCTOBER 2026

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/ KASPERSKY

GEN Z LOOKS TO AI TUTORS FOR NEXT EDUCATION SHIFT KASPERSKY RESEARCH FINDS YOUNGER LEARNERS SHOW STRONGER INTEREST IN PERSONALISED AI TUTORS AND VR/AR CLASSROOMS, WHILE EXPERTS STRESS THE NEED FOR AI LITERACY, HUMAN OVERSIGHT AND DATA PROTECTION

en Z expects artificial intelligence to play a growing role in education, with younger learners showing greater awareness of AI tutors and immersive classroom technologies than other generations, according to new research from Kaspersky. Released ahead of World Teachers’ Day, the study found that 18% of Gen Z respondents identify personalised AI tutors as one of the most promising technologies for the future, compared with 16% of respondents overall. A further 14% of Gen Z respondents pointed to VR and AR classrooms with AI assistants, versus 12% across the wider survey sample. The findings reflect the increasingly digital nature of learning. Kaspersky said 68% of Gen Z respondents have seen technology become more widely used in their own educational experience over the past five years, compared with 55% of respondents overall. Growing familiarity with online

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platforms, digital tools and AI-powered services is shaping expectations for the classroom of the future. AI tutors could help students explore complex topics at their own pace, receive tailored explanations and practise skills based on individual needs, while immersive technologies could make lessons more interactive. International organisations have also highlighted the need for safeguards as AI becomes more embedded in education. Guidance from the OECD and UNESCO stresses the importance of human oversight, ethical use, data protection and the continued development of human skills alongside new technologies. AI literacy gains importance Kaspersky said the challenge is no longer simply whether students will use AI, but whether they have the skills to use it effectively and responsibly. AI literacy is becoming an increasingly important part of modern education, helping students and educators understand both the capabilities and limitations of AI systems.

Users should verify AI-generated information against reliable sources because answers can contain inaccuracies, outdated information or missing context. Human expertise also remains essential, with critical thinking, independent analysis and guidance from educators continuing to play a central role in the learning process. Data protection is another priority. Students need to understand what information they share with AI platforms, how that data may be used and which privacy controls are available. Broader cybersecurity skills are also becoming more relevant as AI tools become

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part of studying, work and everyday communication. Kaspersky Academy offers a Cyberhygiene course covering common digital risks and practical ways to protect accounts, devices and personal information. The company has also launched an online training series focused on the responsible use of AI in education and produced a Digital

Schoolbag guide for parents and children. “Gen Z has grown up in an environment where digital technologies are already part of everyday learning. Their expectations show that the next stage of education will be about creating more personalised and interactive learning experiences with the help of AI,” said Evgeniya Russkikh, Head of Academic Affairs at Kaspersky.

THE NEXT STAGE OF EDUCATION WILL BE ABOUT CREATING MORE PERSONALISED AND INTERACTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES WITH THE HELP OF AI. www.tahawultech.com

Russkikh cautioned that over-reliance on algorithms could create cognitive and educational challenges by weakening critical thinking and independent problem-solving. Successful AI adoption, she added, requires students and educators to cross-check information, understand the limitations of AI systems and use the tools responsibly. The study was conducted by Kaspersky’s market research centre in 2026 and surveyed 7,200 respondents across 18 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, China, France, Germany, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey.

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/ MERCURY SECURITY

MERCURY SECURITY FLAGS GROWING CYBERSECURITY GAP IN ACCESS CONTROL INFRASTRUCTURE 2026 TRENDS IN ACCESS CONTROLLERS REPORT FINDS INTEROPERABILITY, CLOUD CONNECTIVITY AND AI ARE RESHAPING LONG-TERM PHYSICAL ACCESS CONTROL STRATEGIES

ercury Security has released its 2026 Trends in Access Controllers Report, highlighting a widening gap between cybersecurity requirements and the capabilities of existing physical access control infrastructure. Based on a global survey of 561 physical security and cybersecurity professionals, including respondents from the Middle East, the report found that 78% consider the controller important or critical to their physical access control system strategy, up from 72% in 2025. Cybersecurity gap widens Cybersecurity emerged as one of the clearest areas of concern. Nearly one-third of respondents, 32%, said cybersecurity features are missing from their current controller systems, up from 21% in 2025. Complexity is also increasing, with 74% reporting that cybersecurity and IT coordination have become more difficult to manage. At the same time, 86% said their organisations actively work to stay current with changing cybersecurity and data-protection standards. Steve Lucas, Vice President, Sales, Mercury Security, said: “Organisations recognise the cybersecurity risks facing connected access control systems, but the infrastructure in place isn’t always keeping pace.” “As they look to modernise, users also want to protect existing investments. That makes interoperability increasingly

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Cloud demand outpaces deployment Cloud connectivity was cited by 56% of respondents as a factor influencing controller purchases, up from 50% in 2025. However, only 41% said their current controllers are cloudenabled, while 26% identified cloud enablement as a missing capability. The gap suggests interest in cloud-enabled access control is growing faster than current infrastructure can support.

important and puts more weight on choosing controller platforms that can address current security requirements while providing the flexibility to support what comes next.” Interoperability shapes purchasing Interoperability is influencing controller procurement decisions, with 69% of respondents identifying it as a critical factor. A further 82% said backward and forward compatibility is important to future infrastructure planning. The findings point to growing demand for gradual modernisation strategies that protect existing investments while allowing organisations to add new capabilities over time. Mobile credentials are also affecting purchasing decisions. Half of respondents said they are already using or planning to adopt mobile solutions, while 46% ranked mobile credential integration among the trends influencing controller purchases.

AI raises infrastructure demands Demand for more advanced security capabilities is also increasing. Behavioural analysis and anomaly detection rose from 44% in 2025 to 56% in 2026, while facial recognition was cited by 60% of respondents and predictive security and threat prevention by 50%. Mercury Security said these applications place greater demands on processing power, storage, connectivity, cybersecurity and integration architecture when organisations select controller platforms. More than 39% of respondents are exploring or have adopted edge computing within their security environments, while 41% have integrated controller data with building occupancy and utilisation programmes. Taken together, the findings indicate that controller selection is evolving from a hardware purchasing decision into a longer-term infrastructure strategy, balancing reliability and cybersecurity with interoperability, cloud readiness and support for emerging technologies.