Latest news with #AlainPenel
Tahawul Tech
08-05-2025
- Business
- Tahawul Tech
cybersecurity vision Archives
In an exclusive conversation with CPI Media Group, Alain Penel, Vice President for the Middle East, Türkiye, and CIS at Fortinet, shares insights into the company's regional strategies, collaboration initiatives, and long-term vision for cybersecurity in 2025 and beyond.
Tahawul Tech
08-05-2025
- Business
- Tahawul Tech
Fortinet strengthens AI-powered cybersecurity vision at GISEC Global 2025
Alain Penel, Vice President for the Middle East, Türkiye, and CIS at Fortinet, highlights AI innovation, emerging threats, and the company's drive to build collective cyber resilience. Cybersecurity is undergoing a major transformation, driven by the rapid evolution of AI, quantum computing, and increasingly complex threat landscapes. At GISEC Global 2025, Fortinet is showcasing how its AI-powered innovations are shaping the future of secure networking and threat intelligence. In an exclusive conversation with CPI Media Group, Alain Penel, Vice President for the Middle East, Türkiye, and CIS at Fortinet, shares insights into the company's regional strategies, collaboration initiatives, and long-term vision for cybersecurity in 2025 and beyond. How does your organisation's presence at GISEC GLOBAL 2025 align with your broader cybersecurity strategy for the region? As today's network complexity grows, so does the need for intelligent tools that can simplify management tasks and enhance efficiency. This year's GISEC theme is 'Securing an AI-powered future', and at Fortinet, we have pioneered AI innovation within cybersecurity for more than a decade, with AI serving as the backbone to the Fortinet Security Fabric and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence and security services – it's in our DNA. For organisations in the Middle East seeking to advance in the realm of AI, we're here to support them in having a clear and comprehensive strategy aligned to their existing business initiatives, providing a partner that is an expert not only in cyber, but that has a solid understanding of AI's real-world application. What emerging cybersecurity threats or trends do you believe will most significantly impact enterprises in the Middle East and beyond in the coming year? In 2025, cybersecurity challenges will evolve to become even more complex. Threat actors are becoming more specialized, especially in the early stages of attacks, focusing on reconnaissance and weaponisation. Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) for example is expanding, making advanced tools like phishing kits and automated hacking solutions widely available, even to less skilled attackers. The increasing reliance on multi-cloud environments also introduces more vulnerabilities, creating a larger attack surface for cybercriminals. What's particularly concerning is the convergence of physical and digital threats, where cyberattacks are paired with real-life intimidation tactics targeting executives and employees. The use of AI and quantum computing will also transform the threat landscape. Cybercriminals are already using AI to automate reconnaissance and streamline phishing attacks, and this trend will only grow. On the flip side, AI offers promise for real-time threat detection and response. Quantum computing, while still in its early stages, could disrupt traditional encryption methods, making it crucial for businesses to adopt post-quantum cryptography to protect sensitive data. These technologies highlight the need for businesses to stay ahead of the curve and rethink their cybersecurity strategies. Can you highlight any innovative technologies or solutions your company is showcasing at this year's event? At this year's GISEC we'll be showcasing our SASE and Zero Trust solutions and how they can help each organisation pave a path to a safer network. Of course, we'll also be showcasing our leading AI-Powered Security Operations and how we are uniting intelligence with visibility, automation, and protection. Our commitment to AI innovation is reflected in our expansion of generative AI, which now enhances seven different products across our portfolio. By integrating FortiAI in such a broad range of solutions, we're equipping our customers with powerful, adaptive tools that transform how they manage and respond to cyberthreats, enabling IT and security teams to better secure their organisations. You can learn more from our experts at the event. How is your company collaborating with governments or enterprises to strengthen cyber resilience across sectors? At Fortinet, we believe our corporate responsibility is to make the world a safer place, creating a digital world you can always trust. Working across sectors and prioritizing threat intelligence sharing benefits the cybersecurity community, making us more resilient and effective collectively. That's why we are committed to partnership and cooperation with global law enforcement agencies, government organisations, and industry organisations. As the global cybercrime landscape evolves, these collaborations will only become more critical to halting threat actors. When we work together, we can move faster and more effectively toward our collective goal of disrupting cybercrime. Fortinet is also proud to be part of numerous collaborative efforts to address cybercrime, such as being a founding member of the World Economic Forum Centre for Cybersecurity, a contributor to its Partnership Against Cybercrime (PAC), and a founding member of the Cybercrime Atlas, which meets weekly to profile threat actors, review open-source intelligence regarding cybercriminal activities, correlate data, and identify potential disruption points. What message would you like to share with the global infosec community attending GISEC about your vision for cybersecurity in 2025 and beyond? Our commitment to AI-driven security innovation in 2025 and beyond remains stronger than ever. We will continue enhancing FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services to analyse real-time threat intelligence, strengthening defenses against known, unknown, and AI-driven cyberthreats. FortiAIOps will further evolve its machine learning capabilities to provide even more predictive insights, enabling IT teams to proactively manage performance and security. FortiAI will expand its generative AI capabilities to streamline security operations, automate investigations, and improve threat response across more of our solutions. And we will advance our AI-powered DLP to better prevent data leaks and unauthorised AI access, ensuring compliance and safeguarding sensitive information. Our focus will also remain on capturing our massive opportunities across secure networking, unified SASE, and security operations. Moving forward, we aim to drive further enterprise adoption and reinforce our leadership in these critical areas. Additionally, Fortinet was recently recognised on the Forbes Most Trusted Companies in America list, ranking seventh overall and the only cybersecurity company in the top 50. This recognition reflects our commitment to transparency, security, and customer trust. Image Credit: Fortinet
Channel Post MEA
22-04-2025
- Automotive
- Channel Post MEA
How AI Is Reinventing Cybersecurity For The Automotive Industry
By Alain Penel, VP of Middle East, CIS & Turkey at Fortinet Autonomous and electric vehicle uptake is rising across the Middle East, driven by national agendas and a growing push for sustainable mobility. With this rapid growth however comes an urgent need to address cybersecurity at every stage of the automotive value chain. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the heart of this shift; transforming not only how vehicles operate, but also how cyber threats are identified, mitigated, and prevented. From predictive maintenance to driver behaviour analytics, AI is streamlining processes and unlocking efficiencies. But it is also redefining the security perimeter for automotive organisations. Forces Influencing AI Adoption in Automotive As the industry evolves, three forces are shaping the current landscape: stricter regulations, rapid AI integration, and a fundamental change in communication infrastructure. Regulations such as the Cyber Resilience Act and NIS2 for example are introducing more granular compliance mandates, especially for sectors handling critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, AI is accelerating business and individual learning processes. At the network level, the need for faster communication and bandwidth adaptability is giving rise to next-generation connectivity frameworks that can support AI-native systems. This evolution in infrastructure and intelligence also promotes a significant shift in cybersecurity from reactive to preventive. AI is increasingly being used to analyse threat landscapes and internal vulnerabilities in real-time. This shift enables organisations to prepare for attacks before they happen, leveraging behavioural analytics and high-speed correlation to stay ahead of potential breaches. Hardware acceleration and software development, guided by AI, are now setting the pace for how cybersecurity evolves across the industry. The Impact of Cybersecurity Unsurprisingly, automotive enterprises are becoming high-value targets for cybercriminals. Three core factors contribute to this trend; the financial opportunity of holding connected services hostage, the complexity of digital supply chains, and the vast amount of sensitive data being generated. With every vehicle connected to cloud-based services, a single breach can have wide-ranging brand, operational, and financial repercussions. Moreover, the ecosystem of third-party vendors involved in producing autonomous and electric vehicles significantly expands the attack surface. The use of digital twins and advanced manufacturing technologies further intensifies the volume of valuable data. This information ranging from user behaviour patterns to proprietary designs is not only attractive to attackers but also becomes a tool for launching future attacks or selling on the dark web. AI Transformations in the Automotive Supply Chain AI is also transforming the automotive supply chain. Predictive maintenance for example – as opposed to scheduled or reactive vehicle maintenance, which until now has been the norm – enables companies to forecast part failures, optimise distribution, and reduce warehousing costs. AI can analyse and synthesise so many data streams that this guessing game becomes much more accurate. Not only does this mean more reliable vehicles for the consumer, but it also means that each element of demand can be optimised. Driver behaviour analysis and in-cabin monitoring systems powered by AI are also enhancing safety, particularly for long-haul truck drivers exposed to risks such as fatigue and theft. These AI-powered innovations are already helping companies reduce operational costs while improving customer satisfaction. Strengthening security across the supply chain means embedding real-time monitoring, mapping data flows, and building a fast, coordinated response to incidents. The introduction of cyber resilience principles encouraged by regulatory bodies requires organisations to maintain robust and sustainable response mechanisms. AI can help with this. AI's Role in Automotive Cybersecurity The future of AI in automotive cybersecurity lies in its ecosystem-wide integration. Multimodal AI models that can process text, images, and design data are already in use. But the next phase involves combining internal and external intelligence to strengthen risk postures. Synthetic data created specifically to train internal models without exposing real user data is becoming an important asset in speeding up AI development while preserving privacy. The impact of AI can be summarised as transformative, dual-edged, and adaptable. It is enhancing cybersecurity readiness, being weaponised by attackers, and empowering businesses to evolve quickly in a changing environment. As the Middle East embraces connected mobility and smart transportation, the conversation must move beyond adopting AI to implementing it securely and intelligently. The road to the future may be autonomous, but its success will hinge on cybersecurity built for adaptability, speed, and scale. 0 0
Tahawul Tech
22-04-2025
- Automotive
- Tahawul Tech
How AI is reinventing cybersecurity for the Automotive Industry
Alain Penel, VP of Middle East, CIS & Turkey at Fortinet, explores how AI is quietly becoming the invisible co-pilot in every connected vehicle—monitoring, predicting, and preventing cyber threats before they can hit the brakes on progress. Autonomous and electric vehicle uptake is rising across the Middle East, driven by national agendas and a growing push for sustainable mobility. With this rapid growth however comes an urgent need to address cybersecurity at every stage of the automotive value chain. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the heart of this shift; transforming not only how vehicles operate, but also how cyber threats are identified, mitigated, and prevented. From predictive maintenance to driver behaviour analytics, AI is streamlining processes and unlocking efficiencies. But it is also redefining the security perimeter for automotive organisations. Forces Influencing AI Adoption in Automotive As the industry evolves, three forces are shaping the current landscape: stricter regulations, rapid AI integration, and a fundamental change in communication infrastructure. Regulations such as the Cyber Resilience Act and NIS2 for example are introducing more granular compliance mandates, especially for sectors handling critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, AI is accelerating business and individual learning processes. At the network level, the need for faster communication and bandwidth adaptability is giving rise to next-generation connectivity frameworks that can support AI-native systems. This evolution in infrastructure and intelligence also promotes a significant shift in cybersecurity from reactive to preventive. AI is increasingly being used to analyse threat landscapes and internal vulnerabilities in real-time. This shift enables organisations to prepare for attacks before they happen, leveraging behavioural analytics and high-speed correlation to stay ahead of potential breaches. Hardware acceleration and software development, guided by AI, are now setting the pace for how cybersecurity evolves across the industry. The Impact of Cybersecurity Unsurprisingly, automotive enterprises are becoming high-value targets for cybercriminals. Three core factors contribute to this trend; the financial opportunity of holding connected services hostage, the complexity of digital supply chains, and the vast amount of sensitive data being generated. With every vehicle connected to cloud-based services, a single breach can have wide-ranging brand, operational, and financial repercussions. Moreover, the ecosystem of third-party vendors involved in producing autonomous and electric vehicles significantly expands the attack surface. The use of digital twins and advanced manufacturing technologies further intensifies the volume of valuable data. This information ranging from user behaviour patterns to proprietary designs is not only attractive to attackers but also becomes a tool for launching future attacks or selling on the dark web. AI Transformations in the Automotive Supply Chain AI is also transforming the automotive supply chain. Predictive maintenance for example – as opposed to scheduled or reactive vehicle maintenance, which until now has been the norm – enables companies to forecast part failures, optimise distribution, and reduce warehousing costs. AI can analyse and synthesise so many data streams that this guessing game becomes much more accurate. Not only does this mean more reliable vehicles for the consumer, but it also means that each element of demand can be optimised. Driver behaviour analysis and in-cabin monitoring systems powered by AI are also enhancing safety, particularly for long-haul truck drivers exposed to risks such as fatigue and theft. These AI-powered innovations are already helping companies reduce operational costs while improving customer satisfaction. Strengthening security across the supply chain means embedding real-time monitoring, mapping data flows, and building a fast, coordinated response to incidents. The introduction of cyber resilience principles encouraged by regulatory bodies requires organisations to maintain robust and sustainable response mechanisms. AI can help with this. AI's Role in Automotive Cybersecurity The future of AI in automotive cybersecurity lies in its ecosystem-wide integration. Multimodal AI models that can process text, images, and design data are already in use. But the next phase involves combining internal and external intelligence to strengthen risk postures. Synthetic data created specifically to train internal models without exposing real user data is becoming an important asset in speeding up AI development while preserving privacy. The impact of AI can be summarised as transformative, dual-edged, and adaptable. It is enhancing cybersecurity readiness, being weaponised by attackers, and empowering businesses to evolve quickly in a changing environment. As the Middle East embraces connected mobility and smart transportation, the conversation must move beyond adopting AI to implementing it securely and intelligently. The road to the future may be autonomous, but its success will hinge on cybersecurity built for adaptability, speed, and scale. Image Credit: Fortinet
TECHx
31-03-2025
- TECHx
World Backup Day: Why Backups Fail and What to Do About It
World Backup Day: Why Backups Fail and What to Do About It Backups are supposed to be your safety net, but they fail more often than you think. This World Backup Day , it's time to stop trusting backups blindly and start making them work when it really matters. From ransomware threats to recovery delays, here's why backups fail and how to stay prepared. Backups are supposed to be the ultimate safety net, a last line of defense against data loss caused by cyberattacks, accidental deletions, or hardware failures. But here's the uncomfortable truth: backups fail. More often than you'd expect. And when they do, the consequences can be catastrophic. The problem isn't that businesses don't back up their data, most do. The problem is that they assume those backups will work when disaster strikes. According to Veeam's 2023 Data Protection Trends Report, nearly 21% of all enterprise recovery attempts fail due to corrupted or incomplete backupsv. The message is clear: just having backups isn't enough anymore. Edwin Weijdema, Field CTO EMEA at Veeam Software, sums it up perfectly: 'Fourteen years ago when World Backup Day was started, the aim was awareness. But these days, the focus should instead be on preparedness. Having backups in place and being well prepared to use them during a crisis are different things. Today should be a reminder to stress-test your backups and their accompanying data recovery plans.' Why Backups Fail, And What's Changing One of the biggest culprits behind backup failures is blind trust in automation. Many organizations assume that because their backup software reports a 'successful' job, everything is fine. But without regular testing, they're operating on faith, not facts. Human error also plays a major role, misconfigurations, skipped directories, or improper retention policies can silently break your backups. And even if you get the technical part right, there's the growing threat of ransomware. Attackers no longer stop at encrypting primary data, they go straight for your backups. According to Alain Penel, Vice President of Middle East, Turkey and CIS at Fortinet: 'Backups are a prime target for ransomware actors. Simply having backups is not enough; you need to protect them as cyber criminals adopt more sophisticated methods. Organizations must make foundational changes to the frequency, location, and security of their backups to effectively deal with evolving ransomware risks.' Immutable backups, which cannot be modified or deleted, even by an administrator, are now essential. This ensures your data is safe, even if your entire system is compromised. Michael Cade, Global Field CTO at Veeam Software, emphasizes this point: 'Backups need to level up to match these threats. Immutable backups need to be the standard, keeping them tamper-proof, even when under attack. And while backups are vital, organizations can't just rely on them alone. A business-wide cybersecurity plan needs to be in place as a first line of defense.' It's Not Just About Backups, It's About Fast Recovery Even if your backups survive an attack, speed of recovery matters. If restoring from backups takes days (or weeks), the damage may already be done. Fred Lherault, Field CTO at Pure Storage, highlights how advanced solutions are tackling this challenge: 'Reliable backups are limited in their effectiveness if operations cannot be restored quickly. Some of the most advanced flash-based storage solutions dramatically increase recovery speeds, up to hundreds of terabytes per hour, enabling organizations to get up and running again in hours rather than weeks.' When disaster strikes, slow recovery can force companies to make desperate decisions, like paying a ransom. Yihao Lim, Lead Threat Intelligence Advisor at Google Cloud Security, shares a real-world example: 'In 2018, a US hospital paid a four-bitcoin ransom due to lengthy restoration time from backups to their encrypted assets. The time needed for backups was not compatible with the hospital's almost real-time need to access health records, emails, or other internal applications.' To avoid this, Lim advises organizations to simulate real-world attacks: 'Organizations should conduct simulated attack scenarios to test and measure the time taken to restore critical systems, ensuring they can resume operations quickly when disaster strikes.' Why Testing and Layered Defense Matter Backing up data isn't a one-time task, it's a continuous responsibility. Ziad Nasr, General Manager of Acronis Middle East, puts it bluntly: 'World Backup Day is an important reminder that protecting data is not a one-time task, it's a continuous responsibility. Regular and tested backups are essential to ensure your data is safe and recoverable.' The reality is, even the best technology won't save you without proper processes in place. Ram Narayanan, Country Manager – Middle East at Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., advocates for a layered approach to protection: 'Ransomware has evolved, it's not just going after primary systems anymore; backups are firmly in the crosshairs. Businesses need to ensure their backups are frequent, immutable, and tested regularly. A layered approach that combines smart policies, strong cyber hygiene, and real-time threat prevention can make all the difference.' Narayanan stresses that technical measures alone won't cut it, building employee awareness is just as critical. Always Have a Plan B (and C) Even with the best technology and processes, things can still go wrong. Rick Vanover, VP of Product Strategy at Veeam Software, offers this practical advice: 'Always have a plan A, plan B, and a plan C. We don't know what could go wrong, we can only plan ahead to prevent and be prepared. Whether it's a user deleting a file, a 'fire, flood, and blood' scenario, or a cyberattack, staying resilient is ALWAYS in style.' Future-Proofing Your Backups The old 'set it and forget it' mentality for backups no longer works. As Michael Cade says, World Backup Day itself needs to evolve: 'Like backups themselves, World Backup Day needs to level up and evolve. It sparks great conversation, but it needs to go beyond talking just backups in isolation and cover the full data resilience picture.' In today's volatile digital landscape, businesses need to think beyond traditional backups. Checklists and automated reports are not enough. You need resilience, the ability to not only back up but to bounce back quickly. Key Takeaways to Keep Your Backups from Failing Test your backups regularly – Never assume a backup is safe until you've verified you can restore critical data. Adopt the 3-2-1 rule – Keep three copies of your data on two different media, with one copy offsite and ideally air-gapped. Embrace immutability – Ensure backups cannot be changed or deleted, no matter who gains access. Simulate real-world attacks – Regularly run disaster recovery drills to measure how fast you can restore operations. Secure your backup environment – Use multi-factor authentication, encrypt backups in transit and at rest, and restrict admin access. As Rick Vanover says, resilience never goes out of style, and when it comes to backups, it's the only way to ensure your business survives the unexpected.
