Cyber Security: Accomplished at the Security Middle East Conference 2024

Cyber security played an important role at the Security Middle East Conference, standing as one of the pillars that helped to define the agenda.

Cyber Security at the Security Middle East Conference

The purpose of the Security Middle East Conference was to bring together different security fields, uniting professionals from the top of the industry and steering plans through the insights and inputs of the ‘pioneers of tomorrow’.

Fields that were present at the Security Middle East Conference included:

• Physical Security
• Unified Security
• Information Security
• Cyber Security
• Artificial Intelligence
• …And More.

The point of the conference was to bring together professionals to discuss the above and harness the latest insights and technologies to push forward security in its various forms.

What is the Saudi Vision 2030?

This is all done through the scope of the Saudi Vision 2030 initiative, an innovative new framework that seeks to overhaul and redefine the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Vision 2030 is a strategic framework aimed at reducing Saudi Arabia’s dependency on oil, diversifying its economy and developing public service sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, recreation, and tourism. Launched in 2016 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the initiative focuses on fostering a more diverse and sustainable economy, promising private sector growth and dramatically enhancing the quality of life for Saudi citizens.

Some key goals of the initiative include:

• Increasing non-oil revenue.
• Boosting employment rates.
• Enhancing the nation’s competitiveness on the global stage.
• New investment into innovation and industries.

The incorporation of the Saudi Vision 2030 into existing city infrastructure, comes into form via the creation of Smart Cities.

The Security Middle East Conference discussed smart cities in both the 2023 and 2024 conferences. But what are smart cities, and what is the role of cyber security in them?

In 2023, our speakers devised that the most important part of smart cities was the connection between data and the physical.

One of the problems with attractive infrastructure is that the increased abundance of people leads to an overflow of data, including data which is mundane and useless. For example, foot traffic in some areas can be good to know, however a particular type of coffee bought in one store is useless toward the development of security solutions. So it is the safe collection and sorting of data which is particularly relative to the development of smart cities, this is where cyber security takes centre stage.

Pitched multiple times by professionals at the Security Middle East Conference 2024, there must come a development of the filtering of data, which can judge what is relevant, ai-generated, what is poisonous data, and what is necessary to the development of infrastructure.

What’s next for Saudi Arabia?

To consider the Saudi Vision 2030 successful, one metric is the completion of the first stage of development for multiple giga-projects. Part of the initiative’s goals to evolve infrastructure, and flourish a new tourism economy, is the development of many giga-projects including The Line, NEOM, Red Sea Global and more.

Recently, the development team behind the line revealed that these projects are in fact on track to hit these goals. Following this, we are likely to see the announcement of a 2040 initiative for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which lists the expansion and further development of these giga-projects.

How will the Security Middle East Conference, and the development of Cyber security be affected by this changing initiative? Experts and professionals will continue to convene in Saudi Arabia under the conference roof, and will discuss how different fields of security will adapt to the growth of giga-projects, and the mass amounts of data they will bring. How this data will be safely stored, filtered, and utilized are some of the key questions players from the Security Middle East Conference will come together to answer on an annual basis. These answers will be further developed around the movement of technology, and the way in which the new wave of technologies continues to develop.