Middle East’s cloud computing landscape witnessing robust growth

Cloud adoption in the Middle East region has been has been fairly high with statistics indicating more than 70% of startup entities based in Dubai use cloud computing with the cloud services market estimated to cross Dhs 1 billion by the year 2020. Bahrain has adopted cloud first policy across both the public and private sectors making it the first country in the world to do so. According to Bahrain’s Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA), by mid-2020, the government spending on IT infrastructure is expected to fall by up to 90 percent as it looks to migrate all services to the cloud.

Industry reports suggest that by the year 2020, 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud. Affordability, efficiency, and scalability are considered as the key factors in migrating to cloud computing services. With all the benefits cloud migration offers, security remains the number one concern when organizations talk about cloud adoption and shifting workloads to the cloud. 

In today’s age, data security is the biggest threat that individuals and organizations face. With digital transformation in the rise and business models being reinvented, it has become imperative for organizations to beef up their security and invest in cutting-edge solutions to protect against cyberattacks, data breaches and software vulnerabilities. The security risks and opportunities in migrating to the cloud will be explored in a panel discussion at the 2nd Annual Future Datacentres and Cloud Infrastructure Summit 2020. 

Some of the renowned information security experts, including Amer Sharaf, Director of Compliance, Support and Alliances, Dubai Electronic Security Centre, Venu Sriraj; Chief Information Security Officer, UAE Exchange; Hussein Bahgat, Regional Information Security Officer (CISO) Africa and Middle East, UAE, Standard Chartered Bank; Hariprasad Chede, Chief Information Security Officer, National bank of Fujairah; Saqib Chaudhry, Chief Information Security Officer, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi; and Noora Alahbabi, Chief Information Security Officer, Ministry of Economy will be participating in the panel discussion. The discussion will throw light on the new challenges foreseen in ensuring end-to-end security and the role of cybersecurity professionals to conduct security due diligence while migrating to the cloud.