Alain Penel, Regional Vice President of the Middle East Region, Fortinet, outlines how organisations can prepare themselves for AI-powered cyberattacks and automated threats in this exclusive interview.
What key cybersecurity innovations and solutions will Fortinet showcase at GISEC Global 2026?
GISEC Global is a valuable opportunity to demonstrate how organisations can simplify cybersecurity while keeping pace with rapid digital transformation. This year, Fortinet will showcase innovations across AI-powered Security Operations (SecOps), Sovereign SASE, and advanced threat protection, with a focus on helping customers securely navigate increasingly complex digital environments.
A key theme is the use of AI to enhance security outcomes, from accelerating threat detection and investigation to improving operational efficiency. We will also demonstrate how converging networking and security can provide greater visibility and control across cloud, hybrid, and distributed environments. As organisations across the Middle East continue to embrace AI, cloud, and critical infrastructure modernisation, our focus is on helping them strengthen resilience, reduce complexity, and securely support business growth.
How is Fortinet helping organisations defend against AI-powered cyberattacks and increasingly automated threats?
AI is fundamentally changing the cyber threat landscape. Attackers are increasingly using it to automate reconnaissance, enhance phishing campaigns, identify vulnerabilities more quickly, and scale attacks with greater efficiency.
Defending against these threats requires organisations to use AI as part of their own security strategy. At Fortinet, AI is integrated across our security operations and threat intelligence capabilities to help customers identify suspicious activity faster, reduce alert fatigue, and automate response processes. This allows security teams to focus on the highest-priority risks while improving overall efficiency.
However, defending against AI-powered threats requires more than technology alone. Organisations should combine AI-driven security operations with strong identity controls, Zero Trust principles, continuous monitoring, and effective incident response planning to improve their ability to withstand and recover from cyber incidents.
What cybersecurity risks should Middle East organisations prioritise over the next 12 months?
Organisations should prioritise the risks associated with expanding attack surfaces, increasing digital interconnectivity, and the growing sophistication of cybercriminals. AI-enhanced phishing and social engineering campaigns for example are becoming more convincing and difficult to detect. At the same time, cloud adoption, hybrid work models, and growing connections between IT and operational technology environments continue to introduce new security challenges.
Perhaps the biggest risk, however, is complexity. Many organisations struggle to maintain visibility and consistent security controls across increasingly diverse environments. Reducing this complexity through integrated security architectures, better visibility, and automated security operations will be critical to improving resilience over the coming year.
How can enterprises strengthen cyber resilience across cloud, operational technology and critical infrastructure environments?
Cyber resilience starts with visibility. Organisations need a clear understanding of users, devices, applications, workloads, and operational assets across their entire environment. As cloud, IT, and OT environments become increasingly interconnected, organisations should adopt a unified approach to security that delivers consistent visibility, policy enforcement, and threat detection across all domains. Network segmentation remains an important best practice, helping contain potential threats and limit operational disruption.
Organisations should also invest in modern security operations capabilities, automation, and continuous monitoring to accelerate detection and response. Equally important are regular testing, incident response exercises, and recovery planning. Cyber resilience is no longer measured solely by an organisation’s ability to prevent attacks but also by how effectively it can maintain operations and recover when incidents occur.
What role will Fortinet’s regional partners play in addressing the Middle East’s evolving cybersecurity requirements?
Partners remain essential to helping organisations address increasingly complex cybersecurity challenges while supporting ambitious digital transformation initiatives across the region. They bring deep local expertise, industry knowledge, and implementation capabilities that help organisations translate security strategies into practical outcomes.
Working together, we help customers modernise security operations, secure cloud environments, protect critical infrastructure, and adopt emerging technologies such as AI with confidence. Beyond technology deployment, partners play an important role in driving cybersecurity maturity by sharing best practices and helping organisations strengthen resilience over time.
The broader cybersecurity challenge cannot be solved by any single vendor or organisation. Success depends on collaboration across private and public sectors, including customers, partners, technology providers, governments, and educational institutions to build a more secure and resilient digital future for the Middle East.
Image Credit: Fortinet
Source: Tahawul Tech