FEATURE: NETWORKS AND SECURITY thinkers. Managing converged platforms demands proficiency in AI-assisted analytics, an understanding of threat intelligence, and expertise in deploying cloudnative, scalable architectures.
complexity and a lack of holistic visibility across the converged environment. This often results in increased management overhead and difficulty enforcing consistent security policies across varied infrastructures.
The role of analysts is evolving, from managing disparate tools to interpreting signals and translating intelligence into actionable outcomes across both IT and security environments. Skills such as natural language search, automation workflow design and contextual prioritisation have become just as essential as traditional technical certifications.
Ram Narayanan, Country Manager, Check Point Software
The workload for NOC and SOC teams has grown exponentially, with environments becoming more dynamic and attack surfaces more unpredictable. AI and especially Generative AI is proving valuable in easing that burden. By processing large volumes of telemetry and surfacing actionable insights, AI can significantly reduce manual effort.
Managing converged platforms requires more than technical depth in isolated areas. Today’ s teams must operate across interconnected systems, balancing policy enforcement, identity management, cloud configurations and threat response. The ideal professional combines infrastructure expertise with strategic thinking, able to interpret data in context and act decisively.
Familiarity with AI-powered tools is becoming increasingly critical, particularly as organisations adopt automation to scale defences. What’ s equally important is adaptability: the ability to navigate evolving architectures while maintaining clarity and control. Those who can integrate operational efficiency with a security-first mindset are well-positioned to lead in this new era of convergence.
Laurence Elbana, Director of Sales Middle East, CyberArk
CIOs and IT administrators face significant challenges integrating disparate legacy network and security tools, leading to operational
A critical pain point is the explosion of machine identities – from IoT devices to cloud instances – which are frequently unmanaged or lack proper lifecycle governance, creating vast attack surfaces and high-risk privileged access permissions that are incredibly complex to track, audit, and secure effectively. This leaves organisations vulnerable to undetected breaches.
AI and Generative AI are revolutionising NOC and SOC operations by automating critical functions. They can rapidly analyse vast amounts of network and security data to detect sophisticated threats and correlate seemingly disparate alerts, significantly reducing false positives and alleviating alert fatigue.
For machine identities, AI can learn to recognise normal communication patterns and access behaviours, immediately flagging anomalies that indicate compromise or misuse. Generative AI can further assist by summarising complex incident reports, suggesting remediation steps, and even auto-generating basic security policies, thereby freeing administrators to focus on strategic threat hunting and complex problem-solving.
Managing the convergence of network and security platforms demands a hybrid skill set encompassing deep expertise in networking principles, such as SD-WAN, cloud networking, and traffic routing and advanced cybersecurity practices, including Zero Trust architecture, threat intelligence, and incident response.
Samer Diya, Vice President META, Forcepoint
PwC anticipates that 83 % of Middle Eastern organisations plan to deploy Generative AI tools for cyber defence within the next year – and for good reason. As AIdriven threats evolve fast, AI-driven defence is no longer optional, but essential, to extend data security across all platforms.
Security teams are drowning in alerts, navigating siloed tools while reacting to symptoms instead of root causes. Each new tool requires additional resources to manage, an approach that is costly, inefficient, and
www. intelligentcio. com INTELLIGENTCIO MIDDLE EAST 43