GISEC GLOBAL’s Post

Transcript

My name is Avinash Advani and the founder and CEO at Cyber Knight Technologies. I'm Vivek Gupta. I'm the cofounder and Chief Operating Officer at Cyber Knife. So there are four primary dynamics that are underway that are fueling this cybersecurity expansion in region, right. One is compliance. The sheer number of compliance drivers that have been introduced by regulatory authorities in each country's national cybersecurity centers, national cyber security authorities, data privacy regulations and that has always been a primary driver second. The region has always been a hotbed for geopolitical activity and we know that that is all still continuing. And so where their geopolitical, let's say issues and a lot of dynamics related to geopolitics, you're gonna find there to be a lot of cybersecurity activity as well, including cyber attacks. The third is the region has been playing catch up in terms of cybersecurity maturity to some of the Western countries that have been slightly ahead of the curve and the region has rapidly now in catch up mode and almost in fact at par with some of those. Countries, so you're starting to see that rapid evolution, let's say an investment in cybersecurity. Last but not least is the mega projects and the investment in region that countries like Saudi, UAE and some of the other markets, Qatar, Egypt, etcetera are spending on large digitally transformed projects. So where there's digital transformation, you have to secure it. And that includes, of course rolling out the local clouds in region, which are now becoming a big topic. What do you think? No, absolutely, you've got it. Report on from the investment point of view, it's coming from both the public sector and the private sector. So both sides are putting in their investment in cyber security and that's also driving in a big way a balanced growth. If you ask me this question a few years ago, I would have answered definitely misalignment in regards to spend and need. Based on the kind of challenges that we saw in the market, I will tell you that what I've seen and observed over the last few years is, as I've already mentioned earlier, a rapid, rapid catch up to the maturity of this region. What you're starting to see now with security leaders and Csos, with enterprise and government organizations is that their levels of maturity are at par if not more advanced than some of the Western markets. And so that means that the spend is. Absolutely aligned with the business challenges that they are trying to resolve and I do see that this region is getting even more advanced and progressive than some of their Western counterparts in some cases or eastern counterparts. Because of that growth in cyber security, the maturity level just keeps going higher and higher. What I'm also seeing is that there is continued investment in the legacy systems. However, there are niche cyber security players that are coming into being and that's also being parallelly looked into. And also deployed so that there is a great balance in terms of the new technologies that are coming versus the legacy system. So there is that cutting edge that's coming in where adoption is becoming more and more and it's really helping the attack surface of the clients across the region. So the cybersecurity industry is a rat race. It's continuous, it's ongoing. And I don't think there's ever gonna be a time today or in the future and never has been a time where we've ever been able to keep up to attackers, right? There will always be new frameworks, new compliance mandates that will always be attackers that are leveraging the new tools. AI is a great example, right? So today AI is everywhere, but attackers are also using AI and it's already very obvious and very apparent that attacks that are happening are leveraging. The eye to be more sophisticated. So as long as technology evolves and progresses, attackers are going to be taking advantage of that technology at the same time that our vendors and organizations are. But because of the time it takes to go from conceptualizing a new concept to defend against a certain type of attack or address a certain compliance framework to the time it actually gets released and can be used, you're always playing catch up. So I don't think this is actually something that can ever be solved. What do you think of it? You're absolutely right. Because with Internet of Things. The AI as you rightly mentioned, and also the cloud adoption, the pace at which it's happening, these threats are certainly going to be there. And we need to continuously look at how we can overcome those with the new technologies and with the, you know, cutting edge niche vendors coming in to support those requirements with cloud adoption and with Internet of Things that is coming in play. There's a couple of facets to consider, right? First of all, the governments in this part of the world are really investing in creating cybersecurity skills and not just cyber security, but across the board in IT, but specifically in the cyber security context, there's a lot of investment being made into the skills around cybersecurity. So that's going to fuel by default more talent, but also entrepreneurship and create. Almost zones of of innovation that will come, you know, by default through education and through the investment in people. Furthermore, these governments as well as private sector are coming together to collaborate and create the funding means and mechanisms to support the development of startup organizations in this space. And that too will lead to further innovation and progression in the cybersecurity landscape in regions. So you're starting to see more innovation happen here versus just the traditional, you know, locations around the world. That are that are used are well known for cybersecurity or being hotspots for innovation. And then of course the 3rd and in fact in my opinion, the most important is that when you look at the government regulatory authorities, be it the Cyber Securities Council here in the UAE, be the national cybersecurity authority in Saudi or be it similar organizations in the regional markets across the entire Middle East. What you'll find is that these regulatory authorities are actually guiding and driving the cyber security compliance and. Regulation in a way that empowers enterprise and government organizations and downstream companies to invest in the right way to secure themselves. And so, you know, I think if Western and Eastern and other parts of the world, government organizations and regulatory authorities can learn from this and say, hey, look, let's create this federal national approach towards cybersecurity. I think it's gonna help the globe and the cyber security industry at large. What do you think of it? Absolutely. The talent that is coming into this part of the world now, it's coming from all over and we are. Seeing the investment that is coming in both in terms of human talent and the capital that comes in, it will certainly spearhead a new round of innovation from this part of the world that will go global. So we are seeing that happening and a lot of investments are coming in play and that's going to drive a future sort of Middle Eastern driven technology that will help businesses to on board and also safeguard their own environments. JESEK from its inception and historically continues to be probably the most significant cyber security event that draws the maximum inflow of customers and partners from around the region and in fact from around the world, right. It captures a really broad audience. Now there are very, very good cybersecurity events that happen. Locally in country across the region, right across all countries for that matters, Saudi, Egypt got the and, and all the countries. But the one draw that Jasek has that it's ability to bring people from around the world and surrounding complementary countries, not only in the Middle East is very significant. And so I would say it is probably in the, you know, top tier of global events. That is not only sort of, you know, talking about thought leadership and talk it, it brings an innovation. Brings in startup culture, it has it fuels cybersecurity learning, skill set development, CTF programs, it's very comprehensive. But over the years it's grown. And the more that you speak to enterprise and government customers around the region, I think that it's one of those events that they feel they must attend along with their local events in country. And so, yeah, JESEK is a is a place to be for cyber security. So it's big for us and that's why we go as big as we can. Every year and we'll continue to go bigger with bisexual. Let's hope for a, for a grand bisect 2025. What do you think of it? Certainly Jasek is a place where we get to meet all our partners and customers. The whole ecosystem comes alive. And this is the place where we can network to discuss new technologies, to also look at what is happening in different parts of the Middle East and how we can learn from the use cases. So it's a very, very important event for all the, you know, stakeholders to come together. And be a part of this mega event JESEK Dubai. So I think all of you know that we've been preaching, evangelizing, educating and creating awareness around zero Trust security, right? We're now moving from Zero Trust Security 1.0 to 0 Trust Security 2.0. Come learn more at Cyber Net Standard joystick. Please visit us at Whole 6A145. Look forward to seeing you.