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.” Said 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.