UAE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Muthmainur Rahman and Kajen Subramoney, Ankura Consulting Group LLC
Introduction: The Paradox of a “Role-Model” Nation As the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accelerates its “We the UAE 2031” vision, focusing on social, economic, investment and development aspects, the nation finds itself at a pivotal moment in its digital transformation. In the domain of cybersecurity, 2025 has been a year in which the UAE has been globally praised, whilst the focus domestically has turned to addressing historic challenges. On the global stage, the UAE has cemented its rep - utation as a cybersecurity superpower, achieving “role-modelling” tier 1 status in the United Nations International Telecommunication Union Global Cyber - security Index 2024. This notable recognition reflects the UAE’s mature legal framework, robust technical measures, proactive government vision and a strategy that is outpacing many Western jurisdictions. However, domestically, the UAE Cyber Security Coun - cil’s State of the UAE Cybersecurity Report 2025 provides insight into the complex challenges on the ground. The speed of the UAE’s digital transformation initiatives, characterised by rapid AI adoption, smart city integration, and significant cloud migration, has created a rapidly expanding attack surface. In paral - lel, while the nation builds cutting-edge digital infra - structure, it is concurrently battling a historic “digital debt”, with nearly 50% of exploited vulnerabilities in the country being more than five years old. For general counsel and C-suite leaders operating in the Emirates, the outlook for 2026 is defined by a shift from “voluntary compliance” to “mandatory resilience”. The newly released UAE National Cyber Security Strategy (2025-2031) (NCSS) strongly signals the end of a more relaxed era for digital governance. It introduces a strict system of approvals, supplychain checks and industry specific rules that will significant - ly change an organisation’s legal duties. This article provides an analysis of the UAE cyber landscape. It combines key global insights from major companies such as Microsoft, CrowdStrike, Mandi - ant and others with local data from the UAE Cyber Security Council, Help AG, Group-IB and CPX, offer -
ing a strategic roadmap to drive governance and build resilience in 2026. The Global Context: “Shadow Agents” and the Speed of Breach To put the specific risks facing the UAE into context, it is helpful to first understand the outlook for the global threat landscape. AI’s influence on the threat environ - ment and the anticipated shift toward autonomous attacks dominate the 2026 global narrative. The rise of “shadow agents” In 2025, organisations were challenged by the rapid adoption of AI tools and the associated risk of employ - ees sharing sensitive data with public chatbots, now termed “shadow AI”. As both technology and users have advanced, Google Cloud and SentinelOne pre - dict that “shadow agents” may become a predomi - nant risk in 2026. Employees are no longer just asking chatbots ques - tions; they are deploying autonomous AI agents to execute complex workflows such as: • “review the 50 contracts within this folder”; • “find all emails about payments to company X within my mailbox”; and • “where have I stored the latest financial proposal in my cloud storage?”. These agents possess identities and permissions. When an employee grants an unvetted AI agent read/ write access to a corporate repository, they create a persistent, automated insider threat. For UAE firms that are heavily invested in AI adoption, such access creates a new “non-human” identity risk that bypass - es traditional data loss prevention (DLP) controls. The speed of compromise: the “48-hour” patch race Threat actors have become more agile, likely using AI-enabled tools. CrowdStrike’s 2025 Global Threat Report notes that the average time between an initial compromise and network movement has dropped to just 48 minutes. The need for an organisation to move swiftly when an attack is detected has never been greater.
434 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook