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Middle East universities exposing students, staff and stakeholders to risk of email fraud: Proofpoint analysis reveals

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Proofpoint

Proofpoint released new research indicating that a significant number of the top universities in the Middle East are lagging behind on basic cybersecurity measures, subjecting students, staff and stakeholders to a higher risk of email fraud.

These findings are based on a Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) adoption analysis of the top universities based in the Middle East. DMARC is a critical email authentication protocol that helps protect domain names from being misused by cybercriminals. With three levels of protection—monitor, quarantine, and reject—DMARC ensures that only verified senders can send emails using a university’s domain. The ‘reject’ policy is the most secure, preventing any fraudulent emails from reaching the inbox.

The analysis found that while more than half (55%) of the top universities have published a Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) record, only 13% have implemented the strictest level of protection (‘reject’), meaning 87% of universities are leaving stakeholders vulnerable to email-based impersonation attacks.

“Our research shows that a majority of Arab universities are not taking full advantage of basic email security capabilities to safeguard their communities from email fraud,” said Emile Abou Saleh, Regional Director, Middle East, Turkey, and Africa at Proofpoint. “Cybercriminals often target educational institutions because they hold vast amounts of sensitive data. Universities must adopt stronger measures, such as DMARC, to better protect their students, staff, and partners.”

Key findings from the analysis include:

  • Although over half of the universities (55%) have a basic DMARC policy in place, this is only the initial step in protecting against email fraud. This means that 45% are not taking to steps protect their communities from email fraud.
  • Only 13% of the top universities have implemented DMARC at ‘reject’ level. Therefore, a staggering 87% remain at risk of allowing fraudulent emails to be delivered to their recipients.
  • There has been a slight decrease in the level of DMARC adoption among the top ranked universities in the Middle East year-on-year. In the list of top ranked universities in 2023, 61% of the top universities had published a DMARC policy, with 16% implementing this at ‘reject’ level.

“Organizations in all sectors should deploy authentication protocols, such as DMARC, to shore up their email fraud defences. Cybercriminals pay close attention to major trends and will drive targeted attacks using social engineering techniques such as impersonation, and universities are no exception to this. Students and staff must be vigilant in checking the validity of all emails, especially when levels of uncertainty and anticipation are higher at the beginning of a new term,” continues Abou Saleh.

Email continues to be the number one threat vector in the Middle East. Proofpoint’s 2024 State of the Phish Report revealed that while successful phishing attacks have slightly declined globally, in the UAE they are on the rise (92% of surveyed organizations in the UAE experienced at least one successful attack in 2023 versus 86% the previous year. In addition, in the UAE, 85% of organizations were targeted by BEC attacks in 2023 (up from 66% in 2022).

Proofpoint recommends students and other individuals follow the below top tips to remain safe online:

  1. Use strong passwords:  Do not reuse the same password twice. Consider using a password manager to make your online experience seamless, whilst staying safe. Use multi-factor authentication for an added layer of security.
  2. Watch out for “lookalike” sites: Attackers create “lookalike” sites imitating familiar brands and institutions. These fraudulent sites may pose as a credible establishment, be infected with malware, or steal money or credentials.
  3. Dodge potential phishing and smishing attacks: Phishing emails lead to unsafe websites that gather personal data, like credentials and credit card data. Watch out for SMS phishing too —aka ‘smishing’ — or messages through social media.
  4. Don’t click on links: If receiving correspondence from a university over email, Proofpoint recommends students go directly to the university’s website by typing in the known web address into their browser.

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New Rubrik Agent Cloud Accelerates Trusted Enterprise AI Agent Deployments

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New Rubrik Agent Cloud Accelerates Trusted Enterprise AI Agent Deployments

AI agents represent the biggest opportunity and the biggest threat to organizations everywhere. Rubrik, Inc., the Security and AI Operations Company, today announced the launch of the Rubrik Agent Cloud to accelerate enterprise AI agent adoption while managing risk of AI deployments.

AI transformation is now mandatory for most organizations. However, IT leaders are constrained because Agentic AI has significant risks including hallucination as well as compromise by threat actors. Rubrik Agent Cloud is designed to monitor and audit agentic actions, enforce real-time guardrails for agentic changes, fine-tune agents for accuracy and, finally, undo agent mistakes. Built on the Rubrik Platform that uniquely combines data, identity and application contexts, Rubrik Agent Cloud gives customers security, accuracy, and efficiency as they transform their organizations into AI enterprises.

“IT and security leaders often don’t know what their AI agents are doing or how to undo their mistakes. Rubrik wants to help them answer: ‘What agents do I have?’ ‘What are they capable of doing?’ ‘How are they performing?’ ‘What did they do?’ and ‘Can I undo that when they screw up?’ said Bipul Sinha, CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder of Rubrik. “AI agents have the potential to cause 10x the damage in 1/10 of the time. With Rubrik Agent Cloud, we uniquely address this challenge by leveraging our leadership in data, identity, and resilience to help our customers deploy AI agents with peace of mind.”

Accelerate Enterprise AI Deployment and Resilience 

Rubrik Agent Cloud will offer comprehensive agent management capabilities that encompass the entire AI agent lifecycle – from observability and control to performance management and simulation. 

  • Agent Monitor:
    • Auto-discovers both infrastructure-as-a-service (Azure/AWS) agents as well as platform-as-a-service (M365/AgentForce) agents. 

○ Automatically discovers and maps active agents across popular agent builders such as OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Amazon Bedrock and other popular agent building tools. 

○ Continuously monitors agent activity and data access, and maintains immutable audit trails capturing context from data, identity, and applications. 

  • Agent Govern:
    • Tracks agent usage, evaluates performance against prompts, and gives teams the tools to control destructive/undesired actions.

○ Defines and enforces agent behavior, access, and action policies in real-time. 

○ A centralized tool to provide integration with enterprise identity systems—helping ensure secure, compliant, and controlled innovation.

  • Agent Remediate:
    • Announced in August 2025, Agent Rewind integrates with Rubrik Security Cloud to provide the industry’s only solution for precise time and blast radius rollback of undesirable or destructive actions.

○ Goes beyond observability to allow organizations to instantly undo unwanted or destructive actions, without any downtime or data loss. 

○ Selective rollback of agent-driven changes ensures continuous protection for critical data and systems, and immutable recovery.

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UAE’s AI market set to soar to Dh170 billion by 2030, driving MENA’s Dh610 billion Artificial Intelligence boom

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UAE’s AI market set to soar to Dh170 billion by 2030, driving MENA’s Dh610 billion Artificial Intelligence boom

The UAE’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is forecast to hit Dh170 billion (USD 46.33 billion) by 2030, according to new data from Grand View Research (GVR) in a study that underscores the country’s accelerating dominance in the region’s USD 166 billion (Dh610 billion) AI boom.

Close on the heels of the UAE unveiling its first Arabic-language AI model earlier this year, the new research by the California headquartered- firm reveals that the MENA AI market, valued at USD 11.92 billion (Dh43.7 billion) in 2023, is set to expand almost fifteen-fold to USD 166.33 billion (Dh610 billion) by 2030, growing at an annual rate of 44.8 percent.

“The Middle East, and especially the UAE, is no longer just an adopter of global AI technologies – it’s, in fact, shaping its own playbook,” said Swayam Dash, Managing Director at Grand View Research. “With sovereign funds backing innovation, and policies like the UAE’s new Strategic Plan 2031 leading the way with focus on utilising artificial intellegence in achieving greater financial efficiency for the federal government, the region is becoming a laboratory for how AI can drive both governance and growth.”

GVR’s report further highlights that nearly three in four UAE companies have maintained or increased their AI investments in the past year. Machine learning and deep learning remain the backbone of this transformation, particularly in healthcare, logistics, and financial services.

According to the report, the AI in Healthcare market in the Middle East and Africa, valued at USD 193.1 million (Dh 709 million) in 2023, is projected to reach USD 1.47 billion (Dh 5.39 billion) by 2030 growing at a CAGR of 33.6 per cent, while the region’s legal AI sector – currently at USD 43.3 million (Dh 159 million) – is expected to almost triple to USD 121.5 million (Dh 446 million) at a CAGR of 18 per cent over the same period.

“The release of region-specific AI metrics for the first time quantifies what many have sensed – that the UAE and its neighbours are at the tipping point of a generational transformation,” Dash added. “And the next wave of opportunity will come from specialisation. Sectors like healthcare and legal technology are still emerging here and hence the potential is immense. With the AI in regional healthcare market alone projected to touch USD 8.39 billion (AED 30.8 billion) by 2033, we’re looking at a decade of exponential growth. Likewise, the legal AI space, though currently small, represents a first-mover opportunity in digitising governance, compliance, and regulatory frameworks – areas where the Middle East can define its own benchmarks rather than follow global ones.”

The study also notes how the MENA region is further emerging stronger as one of the world’s most dynamic AI frontiers driven particularly by government-led digital transformation agendas, rapid urbanisation, and the rollout of AI-enabling technologies such as 5G, cloud, and IoT,

“Machine learning and deep learning continue to dominate adoption across smart-city initiatives, healthcare, and urban management ­– with the UAE leading the charge in real-world integration,” said Dash.

The full Grand View Research MENA AI Market Report offers an in-depth analysis of these evolving trends, uncovering how data, policy, and innovation are converging to redefine the region’s digital economy.

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FVC and SearchInform Join Forces to Boost Insider Threat Prevention and Data Protection in MENA

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FVC and SearchInform Join Forces to Boost Insider Threat Prevention and Data Protection in MENA

FVC, a prominent distributor specialising in innovative technology solutions, is pleased to announce its strategic partnership with SearchInform, a leader in information security and insider threat prevention solutions. Together, they are committed to strengthening organizations’ defenses against data leaks, corporate fraud, human-factor related risks.

K.S. Parag, Managing Director, FVC:

“We are excited to welcome SearchInform to our cybersecurity portfolio. The company offers the most powerful and localized DLP on the MENA market. SearchInform solution stands out from the competition due to a number of advantages. The system can be deployed within a few hours, protects the maximum number of data transfer channels, provides smart content-based blocking for all controlled channels and also use digital watermarks to trace the source of potential leaks. SearchInform DLP supports analysis of data in Arabic and has security policies, tailored for requirements of local organizations, enabling timely detection and prevention of confidential data leaks. The solution leverages AI to monitor atypical data transfer channels, recognize graphic elements, transcribe audio into text, detect attempts to photograph PC screens with smartphones.”

SearchInform offers a range of products, including DCAP, DLP, and SIEM. All the tools are seamlessly integrated. Technical support is provided through a specialist assigned to the company, who has extensive experience thanks to clients from various fields.

Commenting on the Partnership, Artem Volodin, CEO SearchInform MENA, stated:

“We are proud to collaborate with FVC, whose expertise in the Middle Eastern market will strengthen our efforts to combat insider threats and data leaks. The region needs a comprehensive solution that will enable organizations to meet regulatory standards, including SAMA, PDPL, DCC, ECC, UAE Information Assurance (IA) Regulation etc. and global ones, such as GDPR, PCI DSS. SearchInform delivers tools for data protection and risk mitigation across all levels: FileAuditor secures file systems, DLP covers workstations and human risks, Risk Monitor addresses corporate fraud, and SIEM protects IT infrastructure.”

The partners are currently conducting expert training, partner enablement sessions, and are also negotiating the implementation of SearchInform products in local companies.

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