TALKING

Dr Srijith Nair, Group Chief Information Security

Officer, Beyond ONE

Making cybersecurity and innovation a national strategy

The UAE’ s newly unveiled National Cybersecurity Strategy lands at a pivotal moment, just as the country is staking its future on becoming one of the world’ s most digitally advanced economies. With a goal of generating 20 % of its non-oil GDP from digital activity by 2030, cybersecurity is no longer just a technical safeguard; it’ s becoming a foundation for national progress.

Unlike traditional models that treat cybersecurity as a defensive afterthought, the UAE is implementing an approach designed to catalyse economic growth. As the entire world embraces the digital revolution, well developed cybersecurity strategies are fast becoming an imperative for national development.

Developed countries such as Australia have received plaudits for introducing a comprehensive and well-structured strategy centred on establishing coherence and resilience. Estonia, often hailed as the poster-child for digital governance, has led an equally compelling but distinct approach. Estonia’ s approach to digital transformation is allor-nothing, forcing cybersecurity to be integrated from the ground up.

The UAE sits somewhere in between these two models. Its digital ambitions align more closely to Estonia, vying to become a digital powerhouse, yet it is a much larger and complex economy. The newly updated strategy ensures that the UAE maintains its agility, but like Australia it must ensure the requisite frameworks and policies match their ambition.

The best national strategies do not see security and innovation as trade-offs; they see them as partners. The challenge is sequencing them smartly.

The five pillars of the UAE strategy, governance, protection and defence, innovation, cyber capabilities, and national and international partnerships, each speak to a different aspect of modern cyber resilience. What is particularly effective is how these elements are structured not only to respond to risk, but to support growth.

Take the drop in distributed denial-of-service attacks: from 58,000 in 2023 to just over 2,000 in 2024. That is not just a sign of more robust firewalls, it reflects real-time coordination, smarter threat detection, and better public-private integration. It is the kind of operational maturity that builds credibility at the international level.

By investing in talent pipelines and turning cybersecurity into a viable career path, the UAE is making resilience part of its economic engine. This is not just about patching vulnerabilities, it is about building the next generation of cyber architects and policy leaders, right at home.

Despite its strengths, no strategy is airtight. The UAE has the structure and ambition, but in an environment that is rapidly expanding, consistent review and reflection are paramount.

While the governance framework is strong, its success will depend on consistent enforcement across all levels, federal, local, and private. Publishing clearer accountability standards, along with regular transparency reports, could help avoid fragmentation and ensure alignment across a fast-moving, diverse ecosystem.

The UAE would do well to introduce national standards for AI safety, ethical use, and red-teaming protocols, turning caution into competitive advantage. The biggest strength of the UAE’ s strategy may be what it implies: that cybersecurity serves as a condition for innovation rather than hindering it.

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