Female Leaders Share Insights Ahead of MEA's Largest Cybersecurity Event

• Two prominent women leaders offer insights on the increased involvement of women in cybersecurity
• They highlight the call for greater inclusivity of opportunities for women within the industry
• They elaborate on practical steps towards involving more women in the cybersecurity industry

With Dubai to host the Middle East and Africa's largest cybersecurity event, GISEC Global 2025, two of the Middle East's most senior female executives are highlighting the importance of extending the industry's female representation base to meet the challenges of developing threats.

A recent study indicated that women were just 24 percent of the security teams across the globe. GISEC's Inspire Programme comes back in retaliation, with the focus to bring in female leaders who are going to shape the cybersecurity future. The programme will have keynote sessions, panel discussions, and interactive sessions by leading ladies in the business.

The event will also include a series of panel discussions, as well as workshops on women in cybersecurity, with an star-studded lineup of eight women speakers, including H.E. Tigist Hamid Mohammed, Director General, Information Network Security Administration (INSA); Dr. Bushra AlBlooshi, Director Cybersecurity Governance Risk Management Department at DESC; Francel Margareth Padilla, Filipino woman cybersecurity leader at the Armed Forces of the Philippines; and Pei Ling Lee, Head Cyber Strategy and Capabilities Development at INTERPOL, among others.

Aarti Borkar, Corporate Vice President of Customer Success and Incident Response at Microsoft Security, is among the speakers who will take the podium. A keen promoter of enabling women in technology, she opines that it is important that women are enabled to utilize their capability to harness their skills as cyber-attacks grow more complex.

Aarti continued, "Cognitive diversity in cybersecurity is essential—it's the only way to achieve a full 360-degree picture of a situation. It enables us to create more holistic programs. With AI contributing more and more to enhancing cybersecurity, organizations need to keep reiterating the value of diverse teams to enhance outcomes in the space."

She emphasized both the function that AI serves to augment cyber defenses and the role it serves to introduce new cyber threats, citing, "AI is helping tip the balance in favor of defenders by improving early detection and response times, ultimately changing the cybersecurity landscape."

Danni Brooke, OSINT Group founder and owner, is a thought-provoking woman speaker who will be speaking at GISEC. She has spent more than a decade working in clandestine operations and intelligence and is dedicated to empowering women professionals in this field. Brooke highlighted human intervention in threat detection, saying, "Automation is important, but humans are needed in interpreting data and making educated decisions—something machines can't do."

She also spoke about the myth that cybersecurity is technical, and she said this included a wide array of jobs in the sector, including threat intelligence, policy development, risk management, and behavior analysis. She advocated more outreach and education to bring in a more diverse pool of talent into cybersecurity.

GISEC Global 2025 will bring over 750 cybersecurity brands and over 25,000 professionals from over 160 nations. The conference will have forward-looking discussions, debate, and emphasis on OT Security and National Security.