Tech Trends Taking Hold of the GCC

Haider Pasha

Sr. Director & Chief Security Officer
Palo Alto Network

Mr. Haider Pasha is Sr. Director and Chief Security Officer for EMEA & LATAM at Palo Alto Networks. Prior to this role, Mr. Pasha spent 5 years at Symantec working as CTO and Systems Engineering Director for Emerging Markets. He has been partnering with CISOs across the industry, executing together on a multi-year architecture strategy across the geography including Cloud Transformations, Autonomous SOC, and Application-Centric Networking. He is a trusted advisor to Palo Alto’s strategic customers and partners, helping them become more competitive and innovative while enhancing their Cyber Resilience Strategy. A key area of specialty for Mr. Pasha is around architecting Security Operations Centers (SOC), designing Threat Intelligence Platforms, and helping customers adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and local government regulations. Prior to joining Symantec, Mr. Pasha spent 15 years at Cisco covering various senior positions in Silicon Valley and as CTO for Cisco Africa.

Mr. Pasha completed his MBA from Manchester Business School, UK and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Purdue University, USA. Mr. Pasha’s successes come from being able to bind advanced technical concepts to commercial, people and process requirements, while maintaining a balanced perspective with the business objective in mind. He is also Palo Alto Networks go-to public Security spokesperson.

Amer Sharaf

Director – Compliance & Support Alliances
Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC)

Amer Sharaf is the Director of Compliance Support and Alliances at the Dubai Electronic Security Center based in the Emirates of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Amer has accumulated a diverse set of skills in his career in the Information Technology field successfully delivering key applications and infrastructure related projects.

His experience also extends to deploying resilient and highly available data centers catering to key critical systems. Amer has considerable experience on city level systems and adopting several disruptive technologies and ensuring that key security principles and technologies are adopted.

Miguel Khourii

General Manager, GBM Abu Dhabi

As the General Manager for GBM Abu Dhabi and Yemen, Miguel Khouri has a track record for strengthening and enriching relationships with a wide-range of customers and industries.

With over two decades in IT Consultancy, Business Management, and Business Development across the GCC, Khouri’s leadership has consistently delivered business growth for GBM Abu Dhabi. His guidance in value-added IT and business solutions provides tangible results for a host of public and private clients in the government, banking and finance, telecommunications, oil and gas, education and retail sectors.

As General Manager, Khouri has nurtured GBM Abu Dhabi local expertise and in-depth knowledge of the market, and has helped to develop a collaborative network of offices across the region that enables clients to benefit from best-in-class IT consultancy.

Prior to joining GBM Abu Dhabi as General Manager in 2011, Khouri was the Director of GBM’s Intelligent Networking Solutions (INS) for the entire region.

Earlier to that, Khouri worked for 8 years with Saudi Business Machines.

Miguel holds a Bachelor degree from University of Balamand in Lebanon, where he majored in Computer Engineering.

Fady Younes

Senior Cybersecurity Director – EMEA
Service Providers and Middle East & Africa
Global Security Sales Operations, Cisco

As Senior Cybersecurity Director for EMEA SPs and MEA, Fady’s role is to focus on delivering Cisco’s vision of integrated cybersecurity for Cisco’s customers and partners, overseeing the day-to-day business and driving growth plans across the region.

Fady focuses on empowering customers, including Service Providers, Government and Private entities, to securely create and deliver value as every country, city and company becomes increasingly digital and migrates to the cloud.

Fady is a Cisco veteran with a proven track record of delivering sales across the region for more than 17 years. He has worked in several roles including East Region Operations Director for Cisco Middle East, General Manager for Cisco UAE, Enterprise Sector Regional Sales Manager and Service Provider Sector (Telcos) Regional Sales Manager.

Prior to joining Cisco, he was Regional Manager at Nortel (MEA), and Product Manager at Ericsson and held international long-term assignments in Sweden, Greece, Indonesia and Egypt.

Fady holds a BE degree in Computer & Communication Engineering from the American University of Beirut.

Melih KIRKGOZ

Regional Technology Director | Middle East & Turkey
Fortinet

Melih Kirkgoz is the Regional Technology Director covering Middle East & Turkey Regions and based in Fortinet Dubai Office.

He is the technology evangelist and spokesperson within the region.Also a member of the elite “Office of the CTO” consultants group led by Fortinet President and CTO Michael Xie himself since 2015.

In this prestigious role he helps to shape company core technologies roadmap acting as a bridge between the field and Fortinet R&D and Product Management.

His highly focused and advanced Cyber Security Career (22+ years) is spread over different roles requiring diverse skills:

• 13 years of technical and presales field experience as a Security Engineer and Security consultant
• Holds CISSP and various Linux, networking and security certifications
• 9+ years of multi-national team management experience
• 7+ years of Regional Technology Leadership

Frida Kleimert Knibbs

VP Security Sales, IBM MEA

H.E. Dr. Mohamed Al-Kuwaiti

Head of Cyber Security
United Arab Emirates Government

Dr. Al Kuwaiti is appointed into the Cabinet as the Head of the Cyber Security for the UAE Government since 2020. As the Head of the Cyber Security, his mandate includes being the Chairman of the UAE Cyber Security Council as well as Managing Director of the National Data Centre under the Supreme Council for National Security. As the Head of Cyber Security for the UAE Government by investiture, Dr. Al Kuwaiti has legal authority over all aspects pertaining securing the cyberspace for the entire Nation.

In his current role, Dr. Al Kuwaiti is tasked with the responsibility of charting a cyber security strategy for the Nation that not only ensuring that the UAE will be entering into the digital era with fully capable of dealing with the new threat landscape brought about by the pandemic, but also to ensure UAE’s leadership in cyber security globally towards establishing the UAE as the world’s leading trusted digital hub supporting the Nation’s digital transformation agenda and the digital future of all residents who made UAE their home. Towards that end, he led the Council to put together an implementation plan to protect the UAE cyberspace through emerging technologies such as Cloud, Big Data and AI in a wholeof-government approach coordinating and orchestrating efforts between Emirates or government entities via a unified platform built and managed by the Council.

Tarek Ghoul

Founder & CEO
Coordinates Middle East

Tarek is the Architect and CEO of Coordinates – A leading Cybersecurity Managed Detection & Response firm in the Middle East, now part of GBM.

Powered by machine learning, automation & orchestration, Cor, Coordinates’ platform enables the seamless integration of any technology to provide defense-grade services to enterprises of all sizes.

The company platform enables Automation and Orchestration of the entire cybersecurity lifecycle across Monitoring, Detection, Response & Remediation.

Between 2004 and 2014, Tarek was the Managing Director at Cisco, where he led the strategic direction, investment, and overall execution of Cisco’s total business in the region.

Before Cisco, Tarek had a career with Schlumberger and 3Com in various executive leadership roles.

Tarek has been voted twice as the top Networking and Communication Executive in MENA and MENA’s 6th most powerful technology executive.

Ossama El Samadoni

General Manager, GBM Dubai

Ossama El Samadoni is the General Manager of GBM Dubai. He has over 30 years of experience working in the region. He has a prominent track record in strengthening business growth in an increasingly competitive market, while supporting organizations of all sizes to navigate digital disruptions and IT transformation challenges.

Samadoni holds a B.Sc. in Engineering and MBA in Marketing, is fluent in Arabic and English, and is the Vice Chairman of SNIA Middle East.

Hani Nofal

Vice President of Digital Infrastructure Solutions,
GBM

Hani Nofal is an ICT executive with more than 25 years of industry and leadership experience in the region. He held several roles in global organizations including Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, 3Com and Cisco Systems.

Hani joined GBM in January 2012. Since then, he’s been part of the executive team and currently leads GBM’s Digital Infrastructure and Cyber Security business across the Gulf and Pakistan. He’s responsible for the development of regional and global alliances delivering solutions that support organizations to realize their digital transformation agendas and protect them from cyber threats.

Prior to joining GBM, Hani was Cisco’s Senior Regional Manager. During his tenure at Cisco, Hani supported the company’s rapid growth and expansion in the UAE and Gulf and was responsible for several strategic successes in the region, achieving significant agreements and milestones.