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Governments are treating AI as a serious policy issue, shifting from advisory to enforceable guidelines to ensure AI deployment is safe and secure. These trends link to an earlier piece by Westlands Advisory, published in October 2024, predicting that strong regulation will be necessary to roll out AI safely, especially in areas such as national infrastructure and public services. As AI becomes entrenched in daily life and critical systems, this article will see how different countries are responding to AI threats, and where things may be headed in terms of cybersecurity solutions, and protection of the entire AI ecosystem.

The Middle East has invested heavily in digitalisation to diversify the economy and reduce reliance on oil revenues. However, this rapid digitalisation has resulted in an increase in cyber risk from both cyber criminals and state-sponsored actors. IBM’s X-Force 2025 Threat Intelligence Index reports that the Middle East and Africa accounted for 10% of global cybersecurity incidents in 2024, up from 4% (2022) and 7% (2023). Saudi Arabia (63%) and UAE (16%) accounted for most of the incidents.

The growing cyber threat and increasing interdependencies between digital infrastructure has led to strong local regulations to protect critical national infrastructure and enforce data sovereignty. Consequently, investment in the protection of Operational Technology (OT), the hardware and software that controls physical infrastructure, has grown considerably and Westlands Advisory’s latest analysis expects continued growth at a CAGR of 24% (2024-2031). Whilst a sizeable portion of this investment is from energy related industries (e.g. oil and gas production, refining, power generation, and energy transmission and distribution), investment in focus sectors will also strengthen (e.g. tourism and smart cities).

A further consequence of regulation and the requirement for data localisation is the growing footprint of data centres throughout the Middle East to provide the compute for ambitious AI related projects such as Saudi Arabia’s Transcendence AI Initiative and Dubai’s RTA AI Strategy 2030’s 81 projects and initiatives.

Investment in OT Cybersecurity has grown significantly over the last decade, resulting in leading asset owners significantly improving their cybersecurity posture. Nevertheless, more is required to balance the benefits of digitalisation with the cyber risk. Westlands Advisory’s research into trends impacting cybersecurity posture concludes that growing digitalisation and security incidents are not currently being matched by investment in cybersecurity. Furthermore, the research highlights that regulation to 2023 has had a low impact on improving the OT cybersecurity posture across most process and manufacturing industries.