What are your career history to date and key career achievements? I began my career as a programmer once I completed my master’s degree in computer science. After a year, I moved into IT sales. I have been in the Gulf for the past 18 years and I moved to Dubai in 2006, where I have held senior regional leadership positions for different cybersecurity companies. I joined Proofpoint earlier this year as Regional Director for the Middle East & Africa and one of my proudest achievements is having grown the strong and committed team at Proofpoint and strengthened the brand’s presence in the Middle East region over the past 6 months. What are your roles and responsibilities in your company? As the Regional Director, Middle East and Africa for Proofpoint, my core responsibility is to ensure we deliver an unmatched support to our partners and customers while accelerating our go-to-market strategy across the Middle East region. Additionally, at Proofpoint we work together towards a common goal of protecting organizations’ greatest assets and biggest risks: their people. What is your advice on finding success in the regional market? The days of one-size-fits-all security are over and this echoes Proofpoint’s commitment with its partners and customers by looking at all of the cybersecurity risks with a people-centric
view and focusing on solutions that protect organizations’ most targeted individuals. In order to succeed in such a fast-paced market, organizations must be agile and ensure they stay ahead of the trends and risks surfacing in their industry – this is the only way they can go beyond their customers’ expectations and truly answer their needs.
Arabia within the top 50 countries in the world on the Global Innovation Index 2017 in terms of their ability to innovate and the outputs of their innovation. While it is promising to see what these new technologies will bring, organizations must consider the potential security implications when deploying them.
UAE is one of the countries where AI will have a bigger impact with an approximate 14 percent of 2030 GDP. This is followed by Saudi Arabia where AI’s contribution is forecasted to be 12.4 percent of GDP.
As more than 99% of cyberattacks rely on human interaction to work, we know that educating employees about cybersecurity best practices is the best way to empower end users to understand how to protect theirs and their employer’s data, making them a strong last line of defense against cyber attackers.
What is the biggest challenge facing the IT indusHow would you assess the try in the region? current state of the region- The biggest challenge facal market? ing the IT industry in our We are witnessing advance- region is the talent gap and, ments and investments in consequently, the struggle new technologies such as in attracting talent. In order Artificial Intelligence and to address this challenge, automation, which will companies will need to continue to play a critical re-assess the types of prorole as a fixer and optimizer files they require, as perfor enhanced IT operations. sonality traits and diversity The flourishing of these of background play a large new technologies is also role when hiring in the cysupported by the increased bersecurity industry. adoption of 5G network, which is being deployed If you could improve one across some of the GCC thing about the IT business countries. what would it be? One of elements that we Additionally, Gartner esvalue the most at Prooftimates that by 2022, 40% point is security awareness of all large enterprises will training. By implementing combine big data and maongoing and effective sechine learning functionalicurity awareness training, ty to support and partially organizations are nurturing replace monitoring, service the most crucial pillar that desk and automation prounderpins a strong culture cesses and tasks. of security.
This is further reinforced by extensive investment in AI, placing UAE and Saudi
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