US firm Resecurity opens new AI-driven R&D centre in Saudi Arabia

Resecurity, a US-based cybersecurity and intelligence company, has announced its further expansion in the Middle East by creating a dedicated R&D centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The new centre will accelerate AI-driven cybersecurity services delivery across the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in close collaboration with local talent and security leaders.

The United States and Saudi Arabia have longstanding security, trade and economic relationships essential to each countries infrastructure. In support of this relationship, Saudi Arabia launched its Vision 2030 programme in April 2016 to diversify the economy through increased trade and investment with the United States and other countries.

To accelerate this growth, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in its digital transformation and the emerging cyber threats that have come with it, focusing on international partnerships, security management solutions and cybersecurity crisis response. The country has prioritised cybersecurity as a pillar of its economic development, implementing major initiatives to raise the levels of cybersecurity readiness.

Futhermore, Saudi youth are now more interested in joining a field that is linked to projects being carried out under Saudi Vision 2030 such as TRSDC, Neom, Qiddiya and Diriyah Gate where cybersecurity is one of the critical components.

To attract local cybersecurity talent for R&D centre, Resecurity has secured a number of internships with students and graduates from King Saud University, King AbdulAziz University and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. These educational alliances will further facilitate knowledge transfer and will adapt perspective technologies to the needs of key enterprises in Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, a recent study from Capgemini Research Institute found two-thirds of businesses now believe AI is necessary to identifying and countering critical cybersecurity threats, and nearly three-quarters of businesses are using or testing AI for this purpose.

As critical research domains for the Riyadh R&D centre, Resecurity will invest in data science, artificial intelligence and cognitive security technologies to protect the region against emerging threats to protect smart cities and critical infrastructure. Cognitive security is the application of AI technologies patterned on human thought processes to detect threats and protect physical and digital systems.

Similar to how AI is used in financial services for fraud detection, AI can counteract cybercrime by identifying patterns of behavior that signify something out-of-the-ordinary may be taking place. Crucially, the use of AI means pattern identification can be made in systems that need to cope with thousands of events taking place every second, which is where cybercriminals will try to strike.

“With rapid digitisation and with the appearance of smart cities, the complexity of cyberattacks and new security risks will only keep growing. The use of AI enables security teams to accelerate threat detection and preventive mechanisms. The industry needs smart cybersecurity,” said Gene Yoo, CEO at Resecurity. “We use AI to recognise threats targeting major Fortune 100 companies and quantify associated risk and potential impact. That allows for increased speed and accuracy of further decision-making using neural networks and trained Machine Learning (ML) models.”

To help enterprises in Saudi Arabia secure their digital ecosystems, Resecurity has partnered with several information security consultancy firms and managed security services providers (MSSP) in the region. The new alliances will help to expand its advanced cyberthreat intelligence and solutions to local organisations. Leveraging AI, Resecurity’s solutions allow organisations to automate the identification, assessment and triage of incoming cyber threats while staying ahead of cybercriminals using AI-driven tactics to attack companies at scale. The company will be expanding operations in the region to increase support for local partners and clients.

“Artificial intelligence will play a critical role in securing our increasingly digital world, especially in key markets like Saudi Arabia. At Resecurity, we’re investing heavily in R&D and AI-powered innovation to give enterprises the upper hand among emerging cyber threats,” said Ayman Alshobaki, business development manager (Middle East) of Resecurity. “We are proud to enter Saudi Arabia as a new critical market to provide best-in-class AI-powered cybersecurity and intelligence solutions.”

Resecurity’s cyberthreat intelligence solutions provide proactive alerts and comprehensive visibility of digital risks targeting an organisation’s ecosystem. The innovative platform allows administrators to reduce potential blind spots and security gaps by quickly seeing in-depth analysis and specific artifacts obtained through the dark web, botnets activity, network intelligence and high-quality threat intelligence data. Its AI-driven solutions draw on data compromising five billion threat artifacts, nine million profiles of threat actors and 700 million fully indexed and translated dark web data entries.

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