Sophos expands cyber-resilience strategy across Middle East

In an interview with TahawulTech, Harish Chib, Sophos’ Vice President for Emerging Markets, Middle East & Africa, detailed the firm’s reinforced cyber-resilience strategy aimed at organisations operating in the GCC’s critical infrastructure sectors as well as under-resourced SMBs and mid-market companies.

Chib emphasised a layered defence model that extends visibility beyond traditional IT assets to operational technology, cloud platforms, identities and third-party supply chains. AI is used to accelerate investigation, triage and response, but “governed autonomy” ensures human oversight for high-risk decisions. Managed detection and response services, delivered through Sophos’ partner ecosystem, are positioned to fill the regional cybersecurity skills gap.

Over the next six months Sophos plans to grow its regional team, broaden enterprise capabilities and explore a local security operations centre when feasible. Priorities include AI-native security, expanded managed detection and response, and deeper support for MSPs to act as trusted security advisers for smaller organisations.