Microsoft hosts CISO Executive Series for Kuwait’s Finance sector professionals

Mar 20, 2019

18th March 2019; Kuwait City, Kuwait – Microsoft today held the ‘Banking Edition’ of its CISO Executive Series – a series for an elite set of top Chief Information Security Officers for the Kuwait’s Finance sector professionals.

The event, held at the JW Marriott, Kuwait City was specifically tailored for the country’s banking industry to enable its professionals to overcome the rising challenges in the cyber-security landscape and meet the security objectives of their business. The summit comes amid continuous rise of cyber-attacks targeting public and private sector organizations and aims to empower professionals to better protect their company perimeters.

Microsoft experts including Ramon Bosch, Principal, Risk & Compliance, Microsoft EMEA, Volkan Verim, Technical Sales Professional, Security Microsoft Gulf, and Mohammed Zayed, Microsoft 365 & Cyber-Security Solutions Lead for Microsoft Kuwait, delivered insightful presentations and demonstrations around Cyber Security.

The sessions covered a holistic approach and introduction to Microsoft trust principles such as security, privacy, compliance and transparency. The attendees also learned about protecting organizational identities and ensuring data privacy and encryption of information including data classification, compliance policies and practices to meet Financial requirements.

Moreover, the Kuwaiti CISOs were engaged into discussions to shed light on the importance of how the migration of core data and applications can help increase security and bring agility to their operations.

A Microsoft Digital Transformation research on cybersecurity found a troubling threat landscape in the region. Some 63% of respondents said their company lost either productivity or data to a cyber incident in 2018; 46% of these victims were affected more than once; and almost one in 10 victims reported incidents “once a week or more”.

Today’s CISOs must manage their organization’s risk in the face of rising challenges and the ever-expanding scale and sophistication of today’s cyber threats,” says Mohammed Arif, Regional Director, Modern Workplace & Security, Microsoft Gulf.
Balancing these challenges with business needs to collaborate, innovate, and grow requires an always-on, multifaceted approach to security. With events like our CISO executive series, we aim to create awareness amongst the security professionals of Kuwait and introduce truly intelligent security capabilities that we can offer, in order for them to harness these technologies and better protect their digital estates to achieve more.”

The Microsoft CISO executive event concluded with key takeaways from all perspectives of cyber security and proved to be a strong platform for security professionals from across Kuwait to network with peers and engage with subject matter experts