AI Is Expanding the Cyberattack Surface and Redefining Resilience

Exclsuive interview with Fady Richmany, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Emerging Markets at Commvault

Integrated Media is at GISEC Global Dubai 2026 with Fady Richmany, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Emerging Markets at Commvault

How is AI changing the attack surface for organizations in the region?

AI is crucial for digital transformation, so we are not debating the importance of AI. I think the UAE is one of the most advanced countries when it comes to adopting technology. The Dubai Government has also announced plans to use agentic AI extensively in the coming years

However, AI comes with a significant amount of data and introduces new types of identities. We are no longer dealing only with human identities but are increasingly dealing with robotic and AI-agent identities that can access data and systems. This creates additional complexity and consequences from an identity and security perspective.

At the same time, AI-powered attacks are another major concern. In the past, a hacker typically needed to be highly technical. Today, with AI, launching sophisticated attacks can become much simpler.

So, AI is important, but it needs to be utilized properly and governed effectively. There needs to be a balance when organizations and large enterprises adopt these technologies.

Why are threat actors increasingly targeting backup and recovery environments?

Backup and recovery are the last line of defence.

When a company is compromised, one of the first things it needs to do is access its backups to recover its data and operations. Hackers understand this. If they want their attacks to be effective, they also need to target the backup environment.

This is where companies like ours, along with many others in the industry, play an important role in making sure that backups remain clean, protected, and safe so organizations can recover when an incident occurs.

How does identity management need to evolve as AI agents and autonomous workloads multiply?

Agentic AI is putting additional pressure on IT because it is creating many robotic identities.

We have also seen attacks where AI has been used with little or no human intervention. This creates an additional security burden, which means these identities need to be properly protected.

Our approach focuses on the recovery side. Organizations need to use the appropriate security technologies available in the market to protect their environments and ensure that the right identities have access to the right resources.

But we also need to address what happens when an identity is compromised. How do you recover the environment? How do you recover the identity infrastructure? That is becoming a very important topic.

What does Cloud Unity offer beyond separate point solutions?

Cloud Unity brings together identity, security, and operational resilience. We combine people and processes and work closely with many of the leading security technology partners in the market.

We integrate information from different technologies and provide identity resiliency to help protect organizations from both sides of the problem.

We also have something called ResOps, or Resiliency Operations. It is a methodology for how organizations should operate. We believe organizations need to educate their people, keep them aware, and make sure everyone understands their role during a crisis. They also need to modernize their processes.

All of this comes together to make sure the environment remains resilient and productive. And this is not a one-time exercise but has been continuously tested – time and again.

How does ResOps help organizations move from reactive security to a more measurable and proactive approach?

In the olden days, we used what we called backup drills. This is particularly common in banking and government, where people would come together every quarter and check whether the backup was working.

But that approach is no longer enough.

Recovering data is not simply about recovering the information. During a cyberattack, you need to recover clean data and ensure that the environment you are restoring is safe. That means organizations need continuous testing. You have to align people, processes, and technology and make testing an ongoing activity.

When a compromise happens, everyone needs to know their role – Who has access? What are the steps that need to be followed? Who is responsible for each action? The ultimate objective is to be able to recover a clean copy of the data and get the organization back into operation as quickly and safely as possible.

What will the new Center of Excellence in Abu Dhabi focus on, and how will it support the UAE’s digital transformation goals?

One of our strategies is to align closely with local authorities, and work together with them. We work very closely with the UAE Cyber Security Council and have developed this initiative together with them.

The purpose of the Center of Excellence is to bring innovation to the region. It will be a center for innovation, with R&D and technology development taking place in the region. It will also be a center for developing local talent. We are partnering with universities and aim to train young Emiratis in areas such as cyber resilience and cyber defense. It will also be a center for awareness.

I would quote what Dr. Mohamed Al Kuwaiti said- the responsibility for cyber defense does not rely on one technology, one individual, or one government. It requires the entire community to work together to fight cyber threats. That is the purpose of the center. It is to bring all these elements together, support the cybersecurity community, and give back to the region. We want to create awareness, talent, and innovation.