As one of the biggest economies in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates is currently undergoing a significant shift in how it makes its money. While oil exports have fuelled much of the country’s dramatic growth over the past few decades, it is now diversifying into technology in order to maintain its position in the post-oil era.

Rabih Dabboussi, SVP of sales, marketing and business development at DarkMatter

This has so far been highly successful, with investment in infrastructure driving the UAE into the World Economic Forum’s top 30 most networked countries in the world. But this success has brought its own threats, in the form of significantly increased cybersecurity risks.


“The nation has been modernising, digitising, expanding and building out both its economic pillars as well as the way government operates and serves its constituents, whether they're citizens or businesses or residents or visitors,” explains Rabih Dabboussi, SVP of sales, marketing and business development at DarkMatter, one of the UAE’s biggest cybersecurity companies.


“That created a massive digital footprint, and the fact that the UAE has been known through Dubai and Abu Dhabi to be the most modern, safe and open nation in the Middle East region, it's really all good, but it's also put us at the forefront of cyberattacks that have been taking place in recent years.”

Securing the UAE’s digital footprint

In its mission to diversify its economy, the UAE has been extremely vocal in building its presence in the world of technology.


“The nation was the first nation to establish a minister for artificial intelligence,” says Dabboussi.


“The nation also announced a few years back that they want to become the hub for 3D printing and other innovations as well, so the evolution of smart cities with what Dubai is doing and Abu Dhabi and the rest of the federal government.”


For DarkMatter and others in the region’s cybersecurity space, this has created both opportunities and responsibilities.

“Our focus is definitely the country of our presence and headquarters, but also we have an aspiration to expand beyond that.”

“That really necessitates having somebody like us who can help compliment these massively ambitious objectives with the underlying safety net of securing the digital footprint and securing the government and private sector communications within the country and also outside the country,” he says.


“Our focus is definitely the country of our presence and headquarters, but also we have an aspiration to expand beyond that.”


DarkMatter is only “a little over” four years old, but the company has taken significant steps to meet this need, with services across cybersecurity, including vulnerability testing through its own xen1thLabs, secure communications and digital transformation.

Challenges facing the Middle East cybersecurity industry

Recently the company also performed an exhaustive assessment of the UAE’s digital footprint to create a picture of the nation’s risk.


“We just did a really thorough assessment of the nation's digital footprint; we scanned over 800,000 nodes exposed to the internet that are either owned by the UAE, related to UAE businesses or support UAE businesses and government both within and outside the nation.”


This found that while vulnerabilities are the same as in other places in the world, the UAE does have its own challenges that are relatively unique to the region.


“We do have a unique situation where we have certain industries that may not be the type of industries that other nations have,” says Dabboussi.

“There is a mix of global similarities of what attacks, exploitations and vulnerabilities exist, but at the same time there's that uniqueness that relates to both government, economic pillars and industries.”

“So there is a mix of global similarities of what attacks, exploitations and vulnerabilities exist, but at the same time there's that uniqueness that relates to both government, economic pillars and industries that require us to do further capability building and further techniques that help perfect them, such as the oil and gas and energy industry and the transportation industry that exists within the country.”


Furthermore, while cybersecurity skills shortages are a problem across the world, this is a particular challenge in the Middle Eastern region.


“Attracting talent in high-tech is quite challenging, attracting talent in cybersecurity in high-tech is even more challenging and attracting talent to a region that is not known to be producer and exporter of high-tech innovation is challenging,” he says.


“But you know what? We think of ourselves as a pioneer in this space in the Middle East region. We also think that the UAE now becoming very visible at a global level with all its activities and initiatives, and the fact that there are massive industries such as oil and gas, tourism and transportation and logistics in the country really requires us to be highly innovative and advanced in what we offer to those clients.”

The role of ethical hacking

One way in which DarkMatter is attracting talent is through its involvement in ethical hacking events, such as Hack in the Box, which holds a host of live hacking events as part of its security conferences. Promising high payouts for the winners, these not only help improve the technical capabilities of existing security experts, but allow DarkMatter and others to identify skilled newcomers.


“[We] try and identify the next generation of hacking talent that we may need in our organisation and really at the same time benchmark our capabilities against the global pool of cybersecurity professionals and talents,” explains Dabboussi.


This approach is clearly proving successful. At its tenth annual conference in Amsterdam, Hack in the Box announced the first Hack in the Box UAE, which will take place in October in Abu Dhabi as part of UAE Cyber Week, and which DarkMatter is one of the primary sponsors for.


“It looks like it’s going to be massively bigger than any other Hack in the Box in the past,” he says.

“There's a war out there between the ethical and non-ethical hackers, and that war will continue.”

“They are adding a programme of awards that is almost £2m in different programmes; they are launching the first programme for younger students to help develop the next generation of ethical hackers; they will have a programme on AI and machine learning and obviously they're bringing the global capture the flag theme to Abu Dhabi for the final round, but they're also establishing a younger generation capture the flag activity. So we're quite excited about this.”


Events supporting ethical hacking in general are on the rise within cybersecurity, and for Dabboussi this is a positive sign.


“We're now seeing bug bounties in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and the millions of dollars. The high-tech industry is welcoming the ethical hackers,” he says.


“Our message to those technical individuals and strong engineers who have the inclination to hack is there's a very, very good professional career and path in the ethical hacking area, and we would love to have a chat with you because this is where you should be.


“There's a war out there between the ethical and non-ethical hackers, and that war will continue, it will actually become bigger and bigger, and I think the world needs the best talent to defend ourselves against the attacks of the future.”

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