eetimes.com, May. 07, 2025 –
This week at GISEC 2025 in Dubai, UAE, we saw the realities of AI as both friend and foe in the world of cybersecurity. At the enterprise level at least, the industry has not even considered the effects of quantum computing on cybersecurity.
The theme of this year’s trade show—which the organizers claim is the third largest cybersecurity event in the world with some 25,000 visitors from around 160 countries and with over 750 cybersecurity companies represented—was “securing an AI-powered future.” Indeed, walking around the halls, there were examples of AI battles, illustrations of the levels of threats and vulnerabilities around the world, the tools and software helping deal with them and more.
In his opening speech, Kaspersky CEO and founder Eugene Kaspersky, said, “We are living in a world where it’s very much AI vs. AI—a defence against attack.”
He added that AI is a tool benefiting both cybercriminals and businesses but emphasized that greater efforts need to be implemented by organizations to “help build a safe AI-driven future.”
The head of the UAE Cybersecurity Council, Mohamed Al-Kuwaiti, talked in his speech about the importance of harnessing AI, navigating geopolitical tensions and enabling the digital future to be secure. Talking specifically about the UAE, he said the country faces more than 200,000 daily cyberattacks, with government entities being the most targeted. To tackle this requires robust measures to address the threats posed by AI tools. He highlighted human-data interfaces, autonomous systems and AI governance and digital ethics as key areas that the industry needs to rapidly review.
Indeed, on the UAE Cybersecurity Council pavilion, there were displays of live threats happening in both the UAE and around the world. The booth also displayed models of smart environments, from sports stadiums to factories, warehouses and retail outlets, to demonstrate how basic breaches of security can lead to damaging and massively disruptive scenarios.