Security Middle East and Africa

Group-IB has unveiled a critical investigation revealing how organized cybercriminals are exploiting legitimate payment infrastructure across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. In a novel scheme, scammers are using stolen credit cards to pay real government bills and fines for people at a discount, secretly turning routine bill payments into a way to cash out stolen money, while bypassing bank security.

Within two weeks of Meta’s Sep. 8 launch of its Muse personal AI agent, Cequence Security found traffic matching Muse at more than half of the customers it studied. Most of those businesses would not have known. Muse presents itself as an ordinary Chrome browser rather than identifying as an AI agent, so to standard security checks it looks like a person.

For years, a threat hunting program’s results depended largely on whether it had enough skilled people to run it.SANS Institute has released the SANS 2026 Threat Hunting Survey: The Evolution of Threat Hunting authored by Josh Lemon, SANS Principal Instructor, and this year’s data shows staffing is no longer the top concern it once was.

Kaspersky has shared guidelines for mitigating risks associated with using autonomous AI agents in corporate infrastructure. The document applies the principles of Cyber Immunity, an approach at the heart of building secure-by-design systems. Drawing on known incidents and existing threat models, the new report examines the risks associated with increasingly autonomous agentic systems and outlines how to build trust in their architecture to minimize the potential impact of errors or compromise.

Hexnode has expanded Hexnode XDR with new capabilities for threat detection, alert prioritization and remediation, alongside support for macOS. The enhancements address a persistent challenge for security teams: detecting a threat does not necessarily make it easier to resolve. The need for faster response remains relevant across the Middle East.

Cisco Talos has published findings from two investigations into ClickFix attacks, a technique that persuades victims to copy and run malicious code on their own computers. The investigations show how attackers are using services that organizations already trust and allow through their networks to conceal malicious activity. In one campaign, cryptocurrency traders were persuaded to paste code into Chrome that retrieved the main attack code from a public Google spreadsheet.

WSO2 has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for API Management. The modular, open-source WSO2 API Platform enables enterprises to ship, govern and monetize application programming interfaces (APIs), artificial intelligence (AI) services and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers across any cloud with zero lock-in, with monetization and developer portal reach extending to gateways from 14+ vendors.

The latest Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal update accelerates and simplifies daily operations for SOC teams and threat analysts. AI summarization and MCP connectivity for third-party AI tools unlock the full potential of Kaspersky’s threat intelligence, built on over 25 petabytes of proprietary threat context. Automated smart searches across open-source intelligence (OSINT) deliver additional visibility into potential risks.

The UAE Cyber Security Council and SCC Middle East today announced plans to develop a new Centre of Excellence for Cyber Resilience and Trusted Technology in the UAE, to serve the region and the globe, announced during AI Everything Abu Dhabi. The Centre will provide an environment where government, enterprises, technology partners and specialists can explore emerging technologies, test real use cases, and understand how new solutions can be adopted securely and at scale.

BeyondTrust has promoted Lindsey Claypool to Senior Vice President of Global Channels & Alliances. Claypool’s appointment marks the next phase of BeyondTrust’s partner-first strategy as the company expands its partner ecosystem’s role in helping organizations address a rapidly changing identity security landscape. “The role of the partner is evolving,” said Claypool.