{"id":216938,"date":"2026-05-20T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/why-cybersecurity-is-now-a-ceo-problem-in-the-middle-east-fast-company-middle-east\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T01:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T05:10:07","slug":"why-cybersecurity-is-now-a-ceo-problem-in-the-middle-east-fast-company-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/why-cybersecurity-is-now-a-ceo-problem-in-the-middle-east-fast-company-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Why cybersecurity is now a CEO problem in the Middle East – Fast Company Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why cybersecurity is now a CEO problem in the Middle East – Fast Company Middle East<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/fastcompanyme.com\/technology\/why-cybersecurity-is-now-a-ceo-problem-in-the-middle-east\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-20 01:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: fastcompanyme.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
\nFive years ago, cybersecurity sat largely inside the IT department while boardrooms focused on expansion, inflation, and market share.
\nToday, many CEOs recognize that the biggest threat to business continuity may come from invisible weaknesses buried inside code, algorithms, cloud infrastructure, and connected vendor networks.
\nWhat has changed is not only the scale of attacks but also the realization that a digital failure can threaten the survival of the enterprise itself.
\nThe numbers underscore the shift. A 2026 Heidrick & Struggles survey found that nearly half of Middle East business leaders now rank cybersecurity as the single greatest organizational risk facing their companies, significantly higher than the global average.\u00a0
\nMeanwhile, PwC\u2019s latest Middle East Digital Trust Insights report revealed that 62% of organizations across the region expect cybersecurity budgets to increase this year, reflecting the rapid shift in digital resilience from an operational concern to a strategic priority.
\nThese changes are fundamentally transforming the CEO\u2019s role as cybersecurity becomes more important.
\nTHE RISE OF THE \u201cALWAYS-ON\u201d CRISIS
\nDigital threats exist as a permanent operating condition.
\nExecutives now govern in a state of continuous vulnerability, where attacks can emerge from anywhere: hostile actors, rogue insiders, AI-generated fraud, infrastructure failures, or even trusted third-party vendors.\u00a0
\nToday, cybersecurity briefings are no longer annual formalities. They are recurring agenda items. Chief information security officers increasingly sit alongside CFOs and legal advisors during strategic planning discussions. Some companies are even restructuring governance models entirely, creating dedicated technology and resilience committees at the board level.
\n\u201cOne of the most persistent misconceptions is that cybersecurity sits within IT, when in reality it is a business-wide imperative,\u201d says Hadi Anwar, CEO of CPX. \u201cAI is making today\u2019s threat landscape more frequent, targeted, and complex, affecting operations, finance, reputation, and compliance. Organizations that treat digital risk in silos create gaps in awareness and response.\u201d
\nTHE BOARDROOM IS CHANGING
\nUnderstanding financial governance or operational strategy alone is no longer enough. Boardrooms must also grasp cyber exposure, AI governance, digital infrastructure resilience, and the strategic impact of new technologies.
\n\u201cDigital literacy within the board isn\u2019t so much a radical idea as it is the natural next step in how governance has evolved,\u201d says Rich Marcus, CISO at Optro. \u201cJust as the C-suite expanded over the years to include CIOs, CISOs, and now AI leaders, boards are increasingly bringing in directors with real depth in cyber and AI.\u201d
\nBut Marcus says the real strength of boards lies in their perspective, not just in technical skills. \u201cBoards typically have a longer horizon, which allows them to balance short-term performance with the kind of long-term technology bets that actually shape resilience and growth,\u201d he says.
\nIn practice, Marcus says this means boards should challenge management on cyber risk and revenue forecasts, and understand the trade-offs among speed, innovation, and control.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not yet universal, but it\u2019s becoming a clear marker of market leadership,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd given the direction of global regulation, this won\u2019t remain \u2018nice to have\u2019 for long. It\u2019s heading towards expectation, if not mandate.\u201d
\nIvan Milenkovic, VP Cyber Risk Technology EMEA at Qualys, says a digitally literate board \u201cno longer wastes time asking the impossible \u2018Are we secure?\u2019 question.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, he says, \u201cthey demand to know what the business stands to lose and evaluate the capital efficacy of the controls in place.\u201d
\nAccording to Milenkovic, the most advanced boards are abandoning subjective assessments in favor of quantitative risk models. \u201cThey have abandoned subjective heatmaps in favor of probabilistic metrics, value-at-risk, and more financially grounded frameworks,\u201d he says. \u201cLiterate boards treat cyber as a core business risk, focusing on financial impact, risk appetite, and strategic alignment.\u201d
\nHe believes the Middle East is moving aggressively in this direction, though unevenly. \u201cCurrently, 50% of regional CISOs report directly to the CEO, and 88% are actively measuring the financial impact of cyber risks,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, a gap remains between top-tier enterprises and mid-market organizations still transitioning away from legacy mindsets.\u201d
\nThis maturity gap is becoming more apparent as cyber risk moves from a technical to a financial issue. A recent regional internal audit study found that nearly 70% of Middle East chief audit executives now rank cybersecurity among their top five business priorities, a figure well above the global average.
\nTHE AI CATCH-22
\nMeanwhile, boardrooms are beginning to recognize that AI, the same technology that enables innovation, can also amplify misinformation, automate cyberattacks, fabricate identities, or expose organizations to unprecedented legal and ethical scrutiny.
\nIncreasingly, boards are asking: Can AI systems be trusted? Who is accountable when autonomous systems fail? What constitutes ethical deployment? How should organizations govern technologies evolving faster than regulation?
\n\u201cOne of the most common misconceptions is that AI-related risks are still emerging rather than already present and reshaping the threat landscape,\u201d says Anwar. \u201cAI is accelerating the speed and scale at which attackers operate, enabling more sophisticated and harder-to-detect activity.\u201d
\nHe argues that organizations must move beyond reactive thinking. \u201cOrganizations need to adopt a secure-by-design approach, with strong governance, controlled access, and continuous monitoring built into AI systems,\u201d he says. \u201cWhile AI can strengthen detection capabilities, relying on fully automated responses without oversight can create additional risk. Human judgment remains essential.\u201d
\nA recent Fortinet report identified a staggering rise in AI-enabled cyber fraud\u00a0globally, including deepfake attacks that are increasingly targeting digital banking and financial services ecosystems in emerging markets.
\nAt the same time, not all organizations are equally ready for governance. Even with strong AI ambitions, only a few executives in the Middle East feel fully confident in their AI governance. The contradiction is clear: companies are quickly adopting AI, but many leaders are still figuring out how to manage it responsibly.
\nFROM COMPLIANCE FUNCTION TO INNOVATION ENGINE
\nOne of the clearest indicators of organizational maturity may be how companies perceive cybersecurity itself.
\nFor some, security remains a compliance exercise; an unavoidable cost center designed to satisfy auditors and regulators. For others, it has become a strategic enabler of innovation.
\nMarcus says, \u201cThe simplest way to think about it is this: are you building brakes, or are you dragging an anchor?\u201d
\n\u201cCompanies stuck in a checkbox mindset treat cybersecurity like something bolted on after the fact,\u201d he says. \u201cIt sits on the sidelines, slows decisions down, and is often seen as a cost center that exists purely to satisfy audits. That\u2019s the anchor.\u201d
\nThe organizations moving fastest, however, often treat security differently.
\n\u201cThe more mature organizations treat cybersecurity like the brakes on a race car,\u201d Marcus explains. \u201cThey\u2019re not there to just slow the car down, but to give the driver the confidence to take corners at speed.\u201d
\nIn other words, strong cybersecurity may no longer inhibit innovation \u2014 it may actually enable it.
\n\u201cThis alignment ensures that organizations have the real-time context to prioritize high-impact risks,\u201d Marcus says, \u201ceffectively allowing the business to ride the razor\u2019s edge of the innovation curve without sliding off the road.\u201d
\nMilenkovic believes the real divide lies in how organizations measure risk itself.
\n\u201cCompanies stuck in the compliance trap view security as a static audit function,\u201d he says. \u201cThey stack disparate security tools to satisfy framework requirements without mathematically measuring the reduction in risk probability.\u201d
\nBy contrast, mature organizations increasingly treat cybersecurity as an engineering and operational discipline embedded in business growth.
\n\u201cThey accept that businesses are inherently risk-generating machines,\u201d Milenkovic says. \u201cAs the enterprise scales, risk scales.\u201d
\nTo manage that reality, leading firms are replacing fragmented governance structures with centralized risk operations models capable of running real-time simulations and probabilistic forecasting.
\n\u201cBy quantifying exactly what the business stands to lose in terms of financial exposure and probability,\u201d he explains, \u201cthese mature companies provide safe, visible guardrails that allow the business to accelerate its digital initiatives confidently.\u201d
\nRESILIENCE IS THE NEW COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
\nForward-looking companies are redefining resilience not as a defensive necessity, but as a strategic capability.
\nThis involves investing in redundancy, scenario planning, cyber recovery systems, and better infrastructure visibility. Companies now stress-test their digital operations, as banks stress-test their balance sheets. Resilience is now a key leadership responsibility.
\nStakeholders now evaluate organizations not only by profitability, but by preparedness. Customers want assurance that their data is protected. Regulators expect demonstrable governance. Markets punish companies perceived as digitally negligent.
\nAccording to Anwar, effective governance starts with visibility and alignment. \u201cEffective board oversight of digital risk requires clear visibility into the organization\u2019s threat landscape and alignment with business priorities,\u201d he says. \u201cBoards should enable teams to move beyond technical reporting and focus on measurable risk reduction and governance outcomes.\u201d
\nThat oversight, he argues, must extend beyond cybersecurity dashboards and compliance checklists. \u201cStrong governance ensures cybersecurity efforts are directly linked to business continuity and growth, ensuring that resilience is treated as a core organizational priority.\u201d\u00a0
\nTHE INVISIBLE VULNERABILITIES\u00a0
\nYet even as organizations improve their internal defenses, another challenge is rapidly emerging: the vulnerabilities they do not directly control.
\nOver the past decade, companies have become more sophisticated at protecting their own systems, cloud environments, and distributed workforces. But today\u2019s enterprises rarely operate in isolation. They exist inside sprawling digital ecosystems built on vendors, suppliers, third-party integrations, and interconnected platforms.
\n\u201cThe real blind spot now sits outside the organization,\u201d says Marcus. \u201cToday\u2019s enterprises operate as part of a complex ecosystem of partners, suppliers, and platforms.\u201d
\nA financial institution may rely on dozens of fintech integrations. A healthcare provider may connect across insurers, laboratories, and external systems. Yet visibility into those external security environments often remains limited.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s where risk quietly accumulates,\u201d Marcus warns.
\nHe points to the now-infamous Target breach, which originated not through Target\u2019s own infrastructure but through a third-party vendor. \u201cTrue resilience now depends on extending that visibility outward,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s about understanding how data flows beyond your walls, and where vulnerabilities might be introduced along the way.\u201d
\nMilenkovic believes these blind spots are becoming systemic.
\n\u201cThe primary vulnerability is accumulation and concentration risk,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen entire economic sectors rely on a single cloud provider or a ubiquitous software component, the failure of one highly concentrated digital node can trigger catastrophic, economy-wide cascading failures.\u201d
\nHe also warns that many organizations remain dangerously underprepared for the convergence between IT systems and operational technology.
\n\u201cOrganizations frequently fail to collect and model physical sensor data, leaving them blind to kinetic threats against critical infrastructure,\u201d he explains. \u201cRelying solely on network-level anomaly detection is wildly insufficient for high-consequence industrial environments.\u201d
\nUnderlying all of this, Milenkovic argues, is a broader structural issue: the absence of standardized cyber risk data across industries. \u201cWithout normalized incident data and the universal adoption of probabilistic modeling,\u201d he says, \u201cthe industry remains structurally incapable of comparing risk metrics against peer baselines.\u201d
\nDIGITAL CROSSROADS
\nThe Middle East now records one of the highest average data breach costs globally, with major incidents averaging over $7 million in damages. At the same time, threat intelligence reports across the GCC increasingly indicate that government entities, utilities, aviation networks, and critical infrastructure are becoming prime targets for sophisticated cyberattacks and AI-enabled threat campaigns.
\nRegional leadership increasingly recognizes that trust may become the defining economic asset of the digital age.\u00a0
\nMarcus believes the region\u2019s relatively young digital infrastructure may actually provide a strategic advantage.
\n\u201cIt may sound counterintuitive, but the region\u2019s relative lack of legacy infrastructure is actually working in its favor,\u201d he says. \u201cMany Middle Eastern organizations are effectively building from a cleaner slate.\u201d
\nUnlike older economies weighed down by decades of technical debt, regional organizations have an opportunity to integrate cloud, AI, and cybersecurity simultaneously rather than retrofitting security later.
\n\u201cThat creates an opportunity to leapfrog,\u201d Marcus says, \u201cadopting cloud, AI, and modern security architectures in tandem.\u201d
\nBut that opportunity depends heavily on leadership vision. \u201cIt requires boards that understand the long-term implications of these investments, and leadership teams that see cybersecurity not as a constraint, but as a foundation,\u201d he says.
\nMilenkovic points to the region\u2019s willingness to move beyond legacy models. \u201cMiddle Eastern enterprises are actively transitioning from reactive perimeter defense to proactive resilience,\u201d he says. \u201cMany are already deploying responsible AI practices and quantum-resistant security measures to get ahead of future threats.\u201d
\nLEADERSHIP IN THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
\nBecause digital risk rarely offers complete visibility. It evolves faster than policy, faster than governance structures, and often faster than human intuition. Leaders are being forced to make high-stakes decisions in environments where the rules remain unfinished.
\nThe World Economic Forum\u2019s latest Global Cybersecurity Outlook warns that AI acceleration, geopolitical fragmentation, and widening cyber inequality are now reshaping enterprise risk faster than governance models can adapt. The implication is stark: the gap between technological innovation and institutional preparedness may become one of the defining vulnerabilities of modern business.
\nThis could become the main challenge for today\u2019s leaders.
\n\u201cDigital risk is ultimately a shared responsibility across the full executive team,\u201d says Anwar. \u201cOrganizations that succeed are those where cybersecurity is integrated into decision-making at every level, not delegated to a single role.\u201d
\nThe companies that thrive in the coming years may not be those with the most advanced AI systems or the largest digital footprints, but rather those with cyber-resilient CEOs who adopt enterprise-wide strategies to reinvent their functions and business units and embed security from the outset.<\/p>\n

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