Meriam ElOuazzani, the Regional Channel Manager for META at SentinelOne, says that women are proving themselves to be hardworking and well-skilled, capable of taking on any task in the workplace.

Tell us about yourself and your current job role.
As the Regional Channel Manager heading the Middle East, Turkey, & Africa region for SentinelOne, I am responsible for the channel and distribution aspect of our business. Building and maintaining relationships is essential in the channel management function.

A significant part of my job includes forming and developing strong partnerships in the region and building a sustainable revenue growth model for SentinelOne. I am also involved in selecting our regional partners and working with them to sell and develop their service capabilities such as digital forensics, incident response, and managed security service.

Additionally, I develop commercial and marketing strategies adopted by the distributors and resellers to increase revenues and profitability and deliver the best-in-class services to retain existing customers. Moreover, I am responsible for aligning with the company’s sales growth by building and growing the organization partner ecosystem. I also own the partner selling processes and partner-driven revenue to reach the forecasts and quotas by working with strategic and transformational partners.

Tell us about your journey into the security industry. Was the security industry your first choice?  
I hold an Executive master’s in business administration from London Business School and a bachelor’s in engineering from Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. I have a long-standing career in Data Centers and Security solutions sales and channel management with more than 16 years of experience working in the Middle East region for major corporates like HP, Cisco, and VMware.

I’ve always been passionate about new technologies and eager to help organizations in their digital transformation journeys by leveraging the tremendous benefits offered by innovation. Understanding the specific dynamics of ICT in the region, I’ve also wanted to use my capabilities and experience in building channels in the ICT market.

When I joined the market, the vision around the technology of choice was broader. I moved from IT Infrastructure with HP to network and security, mobility and unified access security, infrastructure virtualization to network, and security virtualization.

Thus, I’ve always had roles with a security focus over the years. I am passionate about security, a hyper-growth field that expands to different vectors and security surfaces by day and changes along the way. It is this same passion for the technology and security field which made me join SentinelOne, and I’m happy to have made the right choice and being in the right company at the right time.

During your tenure in the security industry, have you experienced major changes the industry has gone through?
The technology industry is constantly changing, and the workforce needs to develop agility and proactiveness to keep up with these changes. Women are making rapid progress in the technology industry as they rise through the ranks and take on leadership roles in corporations. Talent, tenacity, and ability are now considered essential attributes in potential employees, and the workplace has grown more open and accessible.

To that end, women are proving themselves to be hardworking and well-skilled, capable of taking on any task in the workplace. There are now more options for women to grow and enhance their careers, especially in the UAE, as the workplace offers more excellent prospects for progression. We’ll see even more women in technology in the coming years. This industry has come a long way in terms of inclusivity, and I am so proud to say that I work with a team of women who are talented and successful!

Are there any challenges you face on a day-to-day basis working in this industry?
I have always believed in the need to have more women in ICT. The ones I had the pleasure to work with were exceptional and had the willpower to transform the industry. I also think that young women often have a misconception about ICT. There are great organizations out there where women can learn and deliver the best outcomes.

These corporations believe in the power of inclusion and diversity and understand that talent is not restricted by age, nationality, color, and certainly not gender. I want to make sure that corporates see the true potential that women hold and encourage them to join ICT as it is an exciting domain that will grow and prosper!

I see every challenge as an opportunity. For example, the changing business landscape presents an opportunity to acquire new local and international partners. Moreover, constantly changing technologies provide us the chance to learn something new. Competition might look like a challenge to most.

The cybersecurity market is crowded, but one can succeed when you lead with the right technology that answers real customer needs and supportive partners. At SentinelOne, through our expertise and dedication and constantly innovating in the technical community, we are able to scale growth while positioning our product portfolios and offering superior services and the best support.

What sort of future do you foresee for the security industry as a whole?
Cybersecurity is a fast-transforming field, and this means that whatever we see today as threats is just a small part of what threats are out there, and these threats haven’t been discovered by our customers yet. SentinelOne has revealed many attacks, and this is just the part of had the chance to discover, and we are continuing to analyze and uncover them.

Customers today focus on security as a strategy rather than a solution or a component in their infrastructure. In security and threat hunting, this is just the beginning, and soon we will see that the security industry will gain even more prominence and importance in the business domain.

What more needs to be done to welcome more and more women into the security industry?
Women security professionals demonstrate more extraordinary ability and promise in developing industry ties and managing employee relations. Yet, there are still goals to be met to ensure more women are integrated into the security field.

Encouraging girls and young women to study computer science and increasing the visibility of female role models in security will make the industry more accessible. Moreover, challenging the perception that security is a gender-specific role and industry-wide mentoring and coaching for women starting careers in the sector are ways to welcome more and more women into the security industry.