Kuwait– Microsofttoday held the ‘Banking Edition’ of its CISO Executive Series - a series for anelite set of top Chief Information Security Officers for the Kuwait’s Financesector professionals.

The event, held at the JWMarriott, Kuwait City was specifically tailored for the country’s bankingindustry to enable its professionals to overcome the rising challenges in thecyber-security landscape and meet the security objectives of their business.The summit comes amid continuous rise of cyber-attacks targeting public andprivate sector organizations and aims to empower professionals to betterprotect their company perimeters.  

Microsoft expertsincluding Ramon Bosch, Principal, Risk & Compliance, Microsoft EMEA, VolkanVerim, Technical Sales Professional, Security Microsoft Gulf, and MohammedZayed, 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 trustprinciples such as security, privacy, compliance and transparency. Theattendees also learned about protecting organizational identities and ensuringdata privacy and encryption of information including data classification,compliance policies and practices to meet Financial requirements. Moreover, theKuwaiti CISOs were engaged into discussions to shed light on the importance ofhow the migration of core data and applications can help increase security andbring agility to their operations.

A Microsoft DigitalTransformation research on cybersecurity found a troubling threat landscape inthe region. Some 63% of respondents said their company lost either productivityor data to a cyber incident in 2018; 46% of these victims were affected morethan once; and almost one in 10 victims reported incidents "once a week ormore”.

"Today’s CISOs mustmanage their organization’s risk in the face of rising challenges and theever-expanding scale and sophistication of today’s cyber threats.” Said MohammedArif, Regional Director, Modern Workplace & Security, Microsoft Gulf. "Balancingthese challenges with business needs to collaborate, innovate, and growrequires an always-on, multifaceted approach to security. With events like ourCISO executive series, we aim to create awareness amongst the security professionalsof Kuwait and introduce truly intelligent security capabilities that we canoffer, in order for them to harness these technologies and better protect theirdigital estates to achieve more.”

The Microsoft CISOexecutive event concluded with key takeaways from all perspectives of cyber securityand proved to be a strong platform for security professionals from acrossKuwait to network with peers and engage with subject matter experts.