How Security-First Thinking Is Serving the Middle East in a Challenging Cyber Landscape
Over the past decade, the Middle East has undergone one of the most ambitious digital transformations anywhere in the world. From the UAE’s national digital economy strategy to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, governments and enterprises across the region have poured investment not only into technology but into the security architecture that underpins it. Banks in the Gulf have built some of the most sophisticated fraud prevention systems in global financial services. Airlines have pioneered proactive customer communication programmes that other regions are now studying. Critical infrastructure operators have adopted resilience measures that go well beyond minimum compliance.
That foundation matters now more than ever. As geopolitical tensions between the United States and Iran continue to reverberate across the region, cyber activity has intensified. The threat is real, and organisations are right to take it seriously. But the security leaders interviewed for this piece share a strikingly consistent message: the organisations best positioned to navigate this moment are not the ones mounting the most impressive emergency response. They are the ones that built resilience into their foundations long before the current tensions began.
For many organisations in the Middle East, that description fits.
Security as architecture, not afterthought
Mohammed Aboul-Magd, VP of Product at SandboxAQ, described the challenge in terms that cut through the noise. Rather than viewing security as a set of measures activated during a crisis, he advocates for what he calls a “secure by design” philosophy, one that embeds security directly into how systems are built, how software is developed, and how organisations operate day to day. “Whether organisations are addressing encryption security, AI security, software supply chain risks, or other cybersecurity challenges, security needs to be embedded directly into how systems are designed and built,” he explained. “These should be part of the organisation’s operating model, not temporary measures implemented only during a crisis.”
It is a principle that resonates strongly in a region where national ambition and technological investment have gone hand in hand. Organisations across the Gulf have had both the incentive and the resources to embed security from the ground up, and many have done exactly that.
Morey Haber, Chief Security Advisor at BeyondTrust, brought a sharp perspective on where attackers focus their energy when tensions rise. “In the course of recent history, it is easier for a threat actor to login versus hack in,” he said. “If a threat actor can compromise credentials, tokens, API keys, or federation trust, they own your environment without installing any malware.” It is a sobering observation, but also a clarifying one: protecting identity is one of the most tangible, actionable steps any organisation can take.
Eliad Kimhy, Senior Security Researcher at Acronis, reinforced this point with an observation that separates the organisations that cope well in a crisis from those that struggle. “Organisations that handle incidents well are generally the ones treating it as an activation of existing plans, not a scramble to build them,” he said. “That gap in preparation is usually where things go wrong.”
Haber laid out what that preparation looks like in practice: segmented architecture, redundant identity providers, offline recovery playbooks, immutable backups, break-glass access procedures, and failover capabilities that have been tested before they are needed. “Bluntly, if identity fails, everything else fails,” he said. “It does not matter if any other system is working because you can simply not even log on.” These are not theoretical safeguards. They are the infrastructure of organisational calm, and they are increasingly visible across the region’s most forward-thinking enterprises.
The first 48 hours, and why they should not feel like an emergency
When threat levels rise sharply, the instinct is to act fast. Patch everything. Lock down access. Review credentials. All three experts agree these steps matter, but they are careful to make an important distinction. These should be activation measures, not discovery exercises.
Haber outlined a clear ownership model. “The first 48 hours are about reducing and monitoring an organisation’s attack surface, not launching new initiatives,” he said. Known vulnerabilities in exposed systems should be patched immediately, owned by IT and information security under the CIO and CISO. Phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication should be verified and enforced everywhere possible, owned by identity and access management teams. Dormant accounts should be disabled, privileged credentials rotated, and suspicious activity actively hunted across both on-premise and cloud environments.
Kimhy added a dimension that is often overlooked in the rush to harden technical defences. If you only have 48 hours, he argued, one of the highest-value investments is simply telling your people what the threat looks like. “The human layer is the most consistently exploited one,” he said, “and a clear, specific advisory, explaining what the threat looks like, what to watch out for, and how to report it, can make a real difference.”
It is a reminder that even in a landscape shaped by sophisticated tooling and automated defences, the simplest interventions often carry the most weight.
People as the strongest line of defence
This is where the conversation shifts from systems to people, and where the story becomes most hopeful.
All three experts, in different ways, arrive at the same conclusion: technology alone is not enough. The organisations that prove most resilient are the ones that have invested in their people. Not just their security teams, but their employees, their customers, and their leadership.
The Middle East offers a compelling case study in what this looks like when done well. Aboul-Magd pointed to banks and airlines in the UAE that have proactively communicated with customers about which channels are official, warning them to disregard messages from unverified sources. “If organisations are not already mandating multi-factor authentication for consumer accounts, implementing it should be an immediate priority,” he said, adding that clear communication with customers about official channels is just as important as any technical measure. This kind of proactive customer engagement, already commonplace in the Gulf’s banking and aviation sectors, reflects a broader cultural strength in the region: an emphasis on trust, service, and clear communication that translates naturally into effective cybersecurity practice.
Haber reinforced the point from the leadership side. “Tabletop exercises must include stress, incomplete data, and legal scrutiny,” he said. “The question is not whether we have a plan for the speed of human response but whether it can be executed correctly under pressure.” Incident response plans that have never been pressure-tested with executives and communications teams will falter when they are needed most. Not because leadership needs to become technical, but because the speed of decision-making in a crisis depends on leaders who have rehearsed their roles.
Kimhy offered a similar observation, one that quietly undercuts the industry’s tendency to lean on technology as a silver bullet. The organisations that communicate well during incidents, he noted, are invariably the ones that practised it before they needed to. An incident response plan that has never been rehearsed under simulated pressure is, in his words, a plan that will be improvised when it matters most.
Trust beyond the perimeter
The question of third-party and supply chain risk is one that all three experts highlighted as particularly important during periods of instability. Attackers increasingly use suppliers and contractors as a route into larger targets, and the standard approach of security assessment questionnaires falls short. “Security assessment questionnaires only measure a supplier’s intent; they do not measure actual exposure,” Haber said. His advice was to take a lesson from zero-trust thinking. “Instead of ‘Trust But Verify’, consider ‘Never Trust, Always Verify’,” he added.
In practice, that means requiring evidence of MFA enforcement from vendors, implementing just-in-time access that eliminates standing privileges, and monitoring third-party sessions in real time. Kimhy advised reviewing the specifics of vendor access, examining what they can reach, under what conditions, and whether that access is as narrow as it should be. For organisations with the resources, regular audits of critical partners offer a level of assurance that no questionnaire can match.
In a region that serves as a global hub for trade, logistics, and financial services, third-party risk management is not an abstract exercise. It is a commercial necessity, and one that the Middle East’s most mature organisations are already treating with the seriousness it demands.
Resilience as a choice, not a reaction
What is striking about the collective message from these three security leaders is not the severity of the threats they describe. Those are well documented. It is the quiet confidence with which they describe what good looks like.
Good looks like an organisation where security is not a department but a design principle. Where the first 48 hours of a crisis feel like an activation, not a scramble. Where employees know what to watch for because someone told them. Where customers trust the organisation’s communications because the organisation earned that trust in advance. Where leadership has sat through uncomfortable tabletop exercises and is better for it.
None of this requires perfection. It requires preparation.
As Aboul-Magd said: “What we are seeing globally right now reinforces why that mindset is important. Organisations that embed security into their systems are far more resilient and less likely to be forced into reactive responses when new threats emerge.”
The current geopolitical climate is undoubtedly a test. But for the many organisations across the Middle East that chose to build well before the pressure arrived, it is a test they have already been studying for.