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The Middle East has rapidly become a hub of digital transformation, simultaneously embracing cloud adoption, AI integration, and unprecedented business growth.
Against this backdrop, cybersecurity has fundamentally shifted from a mere IT concern to a core boardroom priority, with identity emerging as the new, most critical battleground.
At the recent GITEX GLOBAL, Gulf Business caught up with Roland Daccache, senior manager, sales engineering, Middle East & Africa at CrowdStrike, to discuss the key insights his team gathered at the event, the escalating threat from cloud-native adversaries, and how the company is tailoring its strategy to defend the dynamic, high-growth Middle East market.
CrowdStrike is a regular participant at GITEX GLOBAL. What is the core message you are bringing to the platform this year, and what is your mission in the face of evolving threats?
Our mission at CrowdStrike has never changed: to stop breaches. However, the breach itself has evolved. Every year at GITEX GLOBAL, we are here to showcase new innovations and highlight what businesses need to change to remain secure.
The core message is simple: if the cyber threat is evolving — leveraging identity, AI, and cloud — then we, as defenders, must evolve, too.
Cybersecurity is a major topic now, discussed at the board level alongside financial and legal risks. Based on your global threat report, what key trends are you observing in adversary behaviour?
Our report shows threat adversaries are behaving like sophisticated businesses, complete with operation centres and support centres.
Key metrics reveal:
- 81 per cent of attacks are interactive hands-on keyboard attacks, meaning attackers are abandoning traditional malware for tactics like identity theft and phishing.
- We saw a 136 per cent rise in cloud-native attacks, confirming that adversaries are following businesses as they move to the cloud.
- There was a 442 per cent rise in voice phishing attacks, as attackers change tactics to evade detection from advanced endpoint security (EDR) technologies.
It’s often said that people are the weakest link in security. With all the technology advancements, why does the human element still pose such a challenge, and what is the new frontier you believe needs protection?
It’s true that humans remain a very weak link.
Today, we even have self-sufficient AI agents gaining access to organisations, similar to human users. At CrowdStrike, we strongly believe that identity is the frontier we need to protect.
Our focus is on eliminating standing privileges and implementing just-in-time access, ensuring users run with the least amount of privileges needed for their function. This prevents scenarios like an HR intern being able to download all payroll information.
You mentioned focusing on software as a service (SaaS) security. Why is this area often overlooked by organisations, and how does it relate to identity-based attacks?
Organisations often overlook or ignore the security of their SaaS platforms. Everyone in the organisation often runs with excessive privileges within these tools.
An intruder can then launch a hands-on-keyboard attack directly from a compromised SaaS provider. That’s why we acquired a company called Adaptive Shield to specifically protect these environments and eliminate these overlooked points of entry.
What are the main concerns CISOs in the Middle East are bringing to you today, and how does CrowdStrike address them?
The biggest headache for a CISO is that their protection is a moving target. They know buying a firewall and an antivirus is no longer enough.
We’ve seen three main areas of interest:
- Identity security is top of the agenda, as they know over 80 per cent of attacks start with a compromised identity.
- Cloud security, because businesses must adopt hyperscalers and SaaS platforms.
- Securing the use of AI in the organisation. CISOs are deeply concerned about users forwarding confidential data to tools like ChatGPT or Gemini where they have no control.
Read: CrowdStrike launches unified identity security platform to counter AI-driven threats
How is CrowdStrike helping CISOs secure employee use of generative AI tools?
We recently acquired Pangea, an AI security company, to extend our Falcon platform with an AI detection and response (AIDR) capability.
This move will help empower CISOs to protect their organisations from data leaks to AI tools, whether the leak comes from end-users or from developers building AI-enabled applications.
It provides the necessary guardrails to trust the deployment of these new technologies within a corporate environment.
The Middle East is seeing unprecedented business growth and investment. What does this dynamic market mean for CrowdStrike?
More startups, more mergers and acquisitions across financials, healthcare and industrials — this presents a huge opportunity for adversaries to target the weakest links.
Our role is to help businesses safely enable their main potential.
We have seen an unprecedented demand for our products and services and are fuelling this growth by investing more in our Middle East presence, including technical, sales, and channel roles.
Are the challenges for a CISO in the Middle East the same as in the US or Europe? How do you adapt your technology deployment regionally?
They are different. In the US, the debate is often which cloud or SaaS solution to choose.
In the Middle East, we are still debating whether to move to the cloud or whether to enable AI inside the organisation.
We adapt our approach by prioritising the technology we deploy according to the organisation’s current business needs and the regional nuances.
Finally, the skill gap in cybersecurity is a global concern. How can this gap be bridged, and what role does AI play in addressing the talent shortage?
I’m positive about the significant investment being made in the UAE and Saudi markets to develop young talent. The way forward is to train our young generations at an early age — a 15-year-old should be equipped to use AI tools safely and responsibly.
On the flip side, AI and automation investments by players like CrowdStrike are reducing the need for thousands of unfilled jobs.
The analysis of a security incident can now be almost fully automated. I see less need for general human operators, but more need for advanced talent — the “human orchestrators” — because the human instinct and guardrails will never be replaced.
