A 2024 PwC Digital Trust Insights survey revealed that “only half [out of the 3,876 business and tech executives that participated in the survey] are very satisfied with their technology capabilities in key cybersecurity areas” in the Middle East. This statistic and a hundred others that reference a similar status quo highlight the need for cybersecurity innovation in the Middle East.
US-based cloud computing firm Oracle aims to enhance the Middle East’s nascent cybersecurity landscape. In a recent interview, Richard Smith, Oracle’s executive vice president (technology) for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, elaborated on Oracle’s ambitious roadmap for the Middle East. By 2025, Oracle intends to set up 20 fully deployed cloud regions, each housing at least two data centers, in the Middle East and Africa out of over 160 globally. As the region transforms into a “complex threat landscape,” several multiprong measures must be implemented to protect all forms of data.
Richard Smith, Oracle’s executive vice president, of technology, for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, at the company’s CloudWorld conference in Las Vegas. Photograph: Oracle
Oracle’s “zero-trust security model is at the forefront of our strategy” and is “designed to withstand even the most sophisticated attacks in the region,” said Smith at the Oracle CloudWorld conference in Las Vegas. Zero-trust is a cyber security framework that operates on the principle of ‘never trust, always verify’. With zero-trust, Oracle guarantees no data leakage and full sovereignty over customer information.
According to an IBM study, the average cost of a data breach in the Middle East increased by 8.4% year-over-year, reaching $8.75 million in 2024. This makes the region the second most expensive in the world for data breaches, following the U.S., where the average cost amounts to $9.36 million. Last week, Oracle debuted a new feature in its cloud ecosystem that separates network security from the cloud architecture, preventing unauthorized access. It enables businesses to establish stringent rules for managing network traffic, minimizing the risk of errors that could result in data breaches.
Smith aims to foster and bolster trust in the region by partnering with government-owned companies. “The rate of technology and AI deployment in the Middle East is accelerating, and we are also pursuing an aggressive approach to expand our presence in the region,” said Smith, who considers the UAE and Saudi Arabia—the Arab world’s biggest economies—as “extremely important” markets in the region. In February 2023, Oracle signed a $1.5 billion deal with Saudi Arabia to further the Kingdom’s cloud computing capacity.
Oracle has also established its presence in the UAE market through strategic partnerships with telco giant du and Injazat, a technology subsidiary of Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence company G42. The global cloud computing market was worth $602.31 billion last year and is forecasted to grow by 21.2% from 2024 to 2030, according to a report by Grand View Research. “We are constantly scanning the market for new business opportunities… We look for partners who have strong values… It’s not just a matter of Oracle earning from one country, but it is a matter of Oracle making major investments in the economy and building its sovereign cloud capabilities,” Smith remarked optimistically.
