Cyber Security
AI and Automation Tech Are Critical to Modern Security Operations

Steve Benton, the Vice President of Anomali Threat Research, says cyber threat has become a full-on business interruption risk
Tell us about the security threat landscape in the MEA region.
Disruption from ransomware and data breaches remain among the top impacts on organizations in the MEA region. Priority investment in Resilience and Preparedness is paramount, and this must use Threat Intelligence to inform it. The region has evolved into a neighbourhood of rapidly growing digital economies. The investment, innovation, and accelerated business growth that defines the region have made it a lucrative target for threat actors.
Actors are working hard to discover entry points and achieve persistence, especially with the objective of stealing sensitive data. Knowing an organization’s attack surface, backed by relevant threat intelligence, is key to prioritizing its reduction and wider preparedness for attack. All of this is in addition to the obvious – energy, oil and gas. Historically this has been the focus in the region and hence the leverage in and beyond the region. Risks to the reliable production of energy remain and are accentuated during times of geopolitical tension.
Geopolitics in the region cannot be ignored. Regional tensions have the potential to destabilize the region and drag countries and global powers into a wider conflict. At a time like this, it is wise for all organizations to adopt threat-led security operations that utilize multiple and overlapping threat defences. Not only will this assure organizations and wider nations during times of uncertainty, but in the long term, this approach is vital to ensure continued growth and success for the MEA region.
Do you believe AI and automation tech are critical to addressing the complexities of modern security operations?
Without a doubt, both are critical to modern security operations. In fact, security operations are now at the very core of assuring both business operations and growth and the safety and security of wider society. Organizations are digitally hugely complex in their own right, and cyber threats have become equally complex. The span of data from security monitoring against the rules and the latest indicators of compromise and attack has grown significantly.
Security is rapidly hitting two major challenges – cost and speed. Better ways need to be found to afford the visibility into the security of an organization that is so desperately needed. This visibility must be bonded to the latest threat intelligence, applied at pace with insights derived, understood, and acted on as a continuous and dynamic security posture and response.
Nothing less will serve the needs of a modern security operation. However, this challenge has gone beyond the capability of any traditional security team. I know I’ve led significant security teams for much of my career, but today, teams need the ability to fully automate their protection and detection and use intelligence writ large.
What I mean by this is the latest threat intelligence relevant to the organization allied with artificial intelligence that partners with the analysts, saving them huge amounts of time and making decisions faster with more precision and impact. It is time for analysts to be able to do things differently, achieve the level of performance they deserve, and fulfil their security missions. We owe it to them! AI, automation, and visibility unlock the door.
According to you, what are the opportunities and challenges for IT security in 2024?
Cyber threat has become a full-on business interruption risk, and for many fully digitized organizations, this is an existential threat – the business literally stops and may never recover. Security has become limited by the capacities and affordability of the visibility and control needed to properly protect the business.
IT security is at a crossroads – compromise with traditional approaches and technology or optimize with an all-encompassing approach that addresses the constraints of visibility, automation, and smart use of AI to achieve the security needed. The traditional beating heart of SIEM and SOAR needs addressing – that’s the opportunity and the challenge.
The answer is threat-led security operations. For that, a different type of SIEM/SOAR is needed. It needs to have been designed around the analysts and what they need to be successful. They need visibility, insight, and pace. Visibility is across their enterprise and the security controls ecosystem. Insight is the bonding of threat intelligence to both the security posture and detecting malicious or suspicious activity.
Pace is the ability to reach a decision and act on this visibility and insight to disrupt attacks and minimize harm. For that, the analyst needs AI with them every step of the way – their own Copilot that understands their enterprise and the threat landscape – sifting through the data and guiding preparation and response.
Is there a skills gap in the cybersecurity industry, especially in the Middle East? How can that gap be bridged?
Absolutely, there is a skills gap – driven by scarcity of supply, the pace of complexity in defending the modern digital enterprise in an ever more dynamic threat landscape, and burnout. Analysts have literally run out of time in their day. Analysts don’t fail, they simply get outstripped by the defensive workload or incident response pace. All they need is the time to understand the threats properly formulate and execute optimal responses at the pace that protects the business and prepares its resilience going forward.
They are trapped on a stress-inducing merry-go-round – dealing with alert after alert – but never feeling they are getting ahead. Anomali has always had the needs of the Analysts at its heart. Our latest platform combines blistering pace, comprehensive visibility, and Anomali Copilot, which empowers all analysts to play at an elite level in protecting their organizations using intelligence (combining threat intelligence and AI) with security operations in a completely different way.
How important are channel partners for Anomali’s regional presence?
Channel partners are critically important for Anoamli’s regional presence. They bring a nuanced understanding of the regional market and customer intimacy. Often, they are able to knit the Anomali solution with the wider needs of the organization or spot where Anoamli’s game-changing capabilities and cost-effectiveness can be pivotal.
Cloud
SentinelOne Simplifies Secure Cloud Migrations on AWS

SentinelOne today announced its participation in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Workload Migration Program. This initiative supports AWS Partner Network (APN) members with SaaS offerings on AWS to accelerate and streamline workload migrations.
Through the program, SentinelOne will provide AWS customers with accelerated, secure cloud migration support, leveraging modern AI-powered CNAPP capabilities to ensure rapid and protected transitions. With access to AWS funding, technical resources, and go-to-market support, SentinelOne will help organizations reduce migration timelines and costs while maintaining robust security.
SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security delivers real-time visibility and protection throughout the migration journey—whether from on-premises or another cloud—enabling a secure, seamless transition to AWS.
“Through our participation in the AWS ISV Workload Migration Program, SentinelOne is helping customers accelerate secure cloud migrations with end-to-end protection and visibility,” said Ric Smith, President of Product, Technology, and Operations at SentinelOne. “Whether moving from on-prem or another cloud to AWS, organizations can count on us to deliver the security they need throughout their journey—realizing the performance, speed, agility, and cost benefits of the cloud.”
Singularity Cloud Security combines agentless and agent-based protection for deep visibility, continuous posture management, and real-time threat detection across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. By collaborating with AWS and ecosystem partners, SentinelOne ensures seamless integration into migration projects, helping customers move faster, reduce risk, and scale confidently in the cloud.
Availability: SentinelOne’s solutions are available globally.
Cyber Security
Beyond Blocklists: How Behavioural Intent Analysis Can Safeguard Middle East Businesses from Rising AI-Driven Bot Threats

The Middle East is facing an unprecedented surge in AI-driven bot attacks, with malicious automation now outpacing traditional defenses. Mohammad Ismail, Vice President for EMEA at Cequence Security, warns that legacy tools like IP blocklists and rate limiting are no match for today’s sophisticated threats (more…)
Cyber Security
Sophos Boosts Firewall with New Protection and Incident Response Features

Sophos has announced a significant update to its Sophos Firewall software, introducing enhanced protection and incident response capabilities. This update notably includes Sophos NDR Essential, a new feature now available free of charge to all customers holding an XStream Protection license for Sophos Firewall.
This integration empowers Sophos Firewall with two dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) engines specifically designed to detect both malware communications and those utilizing algorithmically generated domain names. This advanced functionality, derived from the Sophos Network Detection and Response (NDR) probe, aims to identify sophisticated malware communications even if they are previously unknown or not yet indexed. It serves as a powerful complement to the Active Threat Response capabilities already embedded within Sophos firewalls.

Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos
Addressing the technical demands of such advanced detection, Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos, explained the strategic approach, “NDR traffic analysis requires substantial processing power. That’s why we’ve adopted a new approach by deploying an NDR solution in Sophos Cloud to offload the heaviest tasks from the firewall.” This cloud-centric design ensures optimal performance without burdening the firewall’s on-device resources.
Beyond network detection, the update also brings significant improvements to connectivity and user authentication. Sophos Connect now integrates EntraID for Single Sign-On (SSO). This new feature for the VPN client, bundled with Sophos Firewall, is set to enhance both the security and user experience for SSL and IPsec VPN connections. The integration with EntraID (Azure AD) enables users to authenticate and leverage multi-factor authentication for both Sophos Connect and access to the user portal hosted by the firewall, streamlining secure access.
Further VPN-related enhancements include:
- Improved user interface and usability: Connection types have been renamed for greater clarity, with “site-to-site” now referred to as “policy-based” and tunnel interfaces as “route-based,” making configurations more intuitive.
- Dynamic validation of the IP address pool: For VPN connections (SSL VPN, IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP), the system now dynamically validates the allocated IP address pool, helping to better resolve potential IP address conflicts.
- Strict profile enforcement: IPsec profiles now exclude default values to ensure algorithm synchronization, effectively eliminating potential fragmentation of session negotiation packets that could otherwise prevent site-to-site VPN tunnels from being established.
- Route-based VPN and SD-RED scalability: The system has been optimized to support up to 3,000 simultaneously established tunnels. Specifically, Sophos Firewall solutions can now manage up to 1,000 SD-RED site-to-site tunnels and connect up to 650 concurrent SD-RED devices.
Additional management improvements enhance administrative flexibility and search capabilities:
- More flexible DHCP Prefix Delegation (IPv6 DHCP-PD): The system now supports a broader range of prefixes, from /48 to /64, improving compatibility with various internet service providers.
- Router Advertisement (RA) and DHCPv6 server: These features are now enabled by default, simplifying IPv6 network setup.
- Resizable table columns: The web admin interface continues its adaptation for ultra-wide screens, with many configuration pages now allowing users to resize columns as needed for improved usability.
- Enhanced object search functionality: The search field within the SD-WAN routing configuration screen now supports more granular criteria, including route name, ID, objects, and object values like IP addresses and domains. Similarly, local ACL rules now also support object name and value searches, extending to content-based searches for more precise results.
- Default configuration changes: To streamline initial setups, default firewall rules and rule groups previously created during new firewall deployments have been removed. The initial configuration now only includes the default network rule and MTA rules. Furthermore, the default firewall rule group and the default gateway probe for custom gateways are now set to “None” by default.
Sophos continues its commitment to cybersecurity through a “Secure by Design” approach, enhancing the intrinsic security of its firewalls. This methodology involves the containerization of specific features and rigorous integrity checks on critical operating system files using mathematical checksums. Any detected checksum mismatch triggers a potential compromise alert, enabling monitoring teams to proactively identify possible security incidents affecting the firewall OS integrity. This proactive detection allows incident response and development teams to react swiftly to critical security events.
This update is now available for manual download and deployment by customers with any Sophos Firewall equipped with a valid license.
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