By Sourav Guha Roy, Practice Head – Cyber Academy, CPX

Prevention remains essential to cybersecurity, but it is no longer enough on its own. As AI-enabled threats become increasingly complex, convincing and harder to detect, a new question is gaining prominence in boardrooms across the region: if an attack succeeds, how quickly can the business recover? How effectively can teams recognize a threat, leaders make critical decisions under pressure and coordinate a response before disruption escalates?

For business leaders, the focus is shifting from simply keeping attackers out to containing damage, restoring critical services and maintaining business continuity. Building this capability requires more than technology safeguards. It means preparing people, establishing clear processes and ensuring teams can act decisively under pressure.

Recovery readiness: From prevention to preparation

Cyber readiness is often measured by what an organization puts in place before an incident: clear responsibilities, tested response plans and technology that supports detection and decision-making. But when an attack succeeds, the real measure of preparedness is how effectively are the people able to use these capabilities to limit disruption and restore critical services.

Cyber resilience extends beyond the initial response. It is an organization’s ability to adapt to disruption, maintain essential functions and recover while managing the wider impact on customers, employees and business performance. The speed and effectiveness of that recovery depend on more than the tools available. People must interpret alerts, assess business impact and make decisions that enable the organization to move forward.

This distinction has important implications for leadership. Preventing every incident may not be realistic, but organizations can prepare for the moments when prevention fails. The priority is to ensure that response plans work in practice, responsibilities are understood and teams can make coordinated decisions under pressure.

Three connected pillars of cyber readiness

A human-centric approach does not reduce the importance of technology. Instead, it aligns three interdependent pillars: people, process and technology.

• People provide context, judgment and ethical oversight. They need the confidence to pause when an instruction appears unusual, verify a request through a trusted channel and report concerns without delay. In an environment shaped by AI-generated impersonation, these behaviors are increasingly important.
• Process turns individual awareness into a coordinated response. Clear escalation routes, decision authority and defined ways of working help employees and specialist teams understand what happens after a concern is raised. Processes should also clarify the responsible use of AI, including which tools are approved, what information may be shared and how AI-related risks should be reported.
• Technology protects systems and supports human decisions by detecting suspicious activity, controlling access and monitoring how AI and organizational data are used. Yet an alert is only an indication that something requires attention. Without context, ownership and action, it does not create readiness or guarantee a timely recovery.

Consider a finance employee who receives an urgent payment instruction that appears to come from a familiar executive. Technology may flag unusual activity, process determines how the request is verified and escalated, and people apply judgment and involve the right decision-makers.

From the frontline to the boardroom

Cyber readiness should reflect the decisions expected of each role. Employees must recognize and report warning signs. Specialists must assess the impact, coordinate the response and restore operations securely. Leaders must make informed decisions when facts are incomplete, balancing security, continuity and accountability.

Readiness depends on the handoffs between these groups: employees need clear reporting routes, specialists need the authority and information to act, and leaders need timely insight into business impact.

Build capability through a continuous cycle

Human-centric readiness is not achieved through a one-time awareness campaign. A practical model is to Assess, Train and Simulate continuously.

Do employees verify unusual requests? Can specialist teams build a shared view of impact? Do leaders know when to intervene? Can critical services be restored within acceptable timeframes? The findings should feed back into the next assessment and improvement cycle.

Conclusion: Make recovery a business priority

No organization can guarantee that every cyberattack will be prevented. But every organization can decide how prepared it will be when one occurs. That means moving beyond prevention metrics to test how effectively teams contain incidents, protect critical services and restore operations.

The most important shift is to stop treating people as the weakest link and start preparing them as an active part of the defense. This does not mean turning every employee into a cybersecurity expert. It means ensuring that each person knows what to recognize, how to respond and when to escalate.

The strongest organizations will not be those that eliminate every human error. They will be those that give people the judgment, processes and support to prevent a single mistake from becoming a business crisis.

For boards and executive teams, the call to action is clear: ask not only how likely an attack is, but how long the business could operate under disruption. Cyber resilience is ultimately measured not by the absence of incidents, but by the ability to withstand them and recover. The organizations best positioned for the future will be those that make recovery readiness a business priority before the next attack begins.

KnowBe4, the global leader in digital workforce security, securing both humans and AI agents, today announced its commitment to expanding in-region data residency across six key international markets: Australia, Brazil, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the United Emirates (UAE).

The expansion addresses escalating regulatory complexity worldwide. By offering local data residency, KnowBe4 enables organizations across industries to secure their whole workforce, people and AI agents, while aligning with local data privacy frameworks.

These new regions are in addition to KnowBe4’s existing data residency capabilities across Canada, the European Union (Germany and Ireland), the United Kingdom and the United States.

“As the global regulatory environment evolves and cyber threats grow more sophisticated, international organizations require clarity and confidence regarding where their sensitive data is stored,” said Bryan Palma, CEO at KnowBe4. “Expanding our in-region data residency across these six markets gives our customers greater control over their data at rest, so they can secure their workforces with confidence.”

Launch in each new region is contingent on the underlying cloud infrastructure becoming generally available. Customer data at rest in these regions will be available across the KnowBe4 Platform.

Cambridge Health Group (“CHG an international specialist healthcare group providing post-acute care and a subsidiary of Amanat Holdings PJSC (“Amanat”), has signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Heriot-Watt University (“Heriot-Watt”) to advance academic research in rehabilitation, long-term care and specialised care.

The agreement brings together CHG’s clinical expertise in long-term care and post-acute rehabilitation across six facilities in the UAE and Saudi Arabia with Heriot-Watt University’s pioneering research in healthy ageing, rehabilitation robotics and assistive technologies. Through its Global Research Institute in Health and Care Technologies and the National Robotarium, Heriot-Watt combines expertise in engineering, artificial intelligence and behavioural science to address complex challenges in health and care. Heriot-Watt’s global presence spans five campuses across Scotland, Dubai and Malaysia, with plans to establish a further campus in Saudi Arabia.

Together, the organisations will connect research with clinical practice, creating opportunities to develop and evaluate innovations that support rehabilitation, maximise independence and improve quality of life for people with complex, long-term care needs. The partners will also pursue national and international research grants, including collaboration with government and industry partners.

The partnership will also support the development of the region’s specialist healthcare workforce through academic training, executive education and tailored development programmes. These will include postgraduate research supervision, internships, industry placements and mentoring, helping connect academic learning with practical experience.

Professor Dame Heather McGregor, member of Heriot-Watt University’s Executive, said: “Universities have an important role in ensuring that research responds to the needs of society and that its benefits extend beyond academia. Our partnership with Cambridge Health Group brings our researchers closer to the questions and challenges shaping healthcare practice, creating opportunities to translate knowledge into meaningful improvements in care. Through education, professional development and practical experience, we look forward to supporting the skills and expertise the region will need as its healthcare sector continues to evolve. We look forward to doing meaningful work together.”

Wael K. Abdallah, Group Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Health Group, said: “As healthcare systems across the region evolve, advancing specialised care will increasingly depend on our ability to connect research, clinical expertise and real-world healthcare needs. At Cambridge Health Group, we see research and innovation as important enablers of better care outcomes and the continued development of post-acute healthcare across the GCC. Our collaboration with Heriot-Watt creates opportunities to bring academic expertise closer to clinical practice, strengthen the capabilities of our workforce and contribute to the long-term advancement of the sector.”

The partnership represents a step towards translating research into practical advances in specialised care, with the potential to benefit patients, healthcare professionals and the wider sector.