Saudi Arabian CIOs have had to adapt quickly to the security challenges posed by staff working from home, on a huge scale.
Since the early months of the year, the coronavirus pandemic has transformed the Saudi Arabian IT landscape in unprecedented ways. Across the Middle East and globally, nationwide lockdowns led to an overnight surge in remote working, Zoom meetings, online shopping and virtual schooling.
In a country which has traditionally seen high levels of strictly in-office working, swathes of Saudi Arabian workers are now working from home, which means the kingdom’s CIOs are rewriting company security policies.
Like much of the rest of the world, offices in Saudi Arabia are no longer centralised, they are spread across multiple homes and under siege from varied threats such as exposed unsuitable hardware, non-firewalled environments, and even unassuming family members who are sharing sensitive equipment and data.
According to Maen Ftouni, country manager for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain at email security firm Mimecast, companies across the kingdom were forced to quickly implement strategies amid lockdown that enabled staff to remain productive.
“With a remote…
