‘Teamwork Is Key to Next-Generation Cyber-Resilience’

Doha, Qatar: Global tech giant Huawei recently used its role as Lead Strategic Partner of GISEC Global 2025 to deliver a simple yet powerful message: next-generation cyber-resilience can only be won by “playing as a team” and by embedding artificial intelligence safeguards into every layer of defence.

At the Dubai World Trade Centre, the company unveiled its AI-Native Security portfolio, headlined by Huawei Cloud’s AI Pangu security models, which combine broad threat understanding with specialized capabilities, automating 99% of threat responses while significantly reducing detection time.

That, along with SecMaster - a unified security-operations platform - is part of Huawei’s “one-centre, seven-layer” architecture, delivering unmatched detection accuracy and outstanding reduction in the time needed to trace an attack’s source. The AI engine is already trained on trillions of telemetry points harvested from three decades of real-world attacks.

While addressing the regional significance of cybersecurity collaboration, Sultan Mahmood Malik, Huawei’s Chief Security Officer for Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, highlighted that implementing next-level security measures to combat the growing number of cyber threats is essential.  

“From what we have seen in the last few years and especially after AI became very prolific, we can see the cyber threats have become very complicated and very multidimensional,” Malik told The Peninsulaon the sidelines of the prestigious event, which brought together over 25,000 cybersecurity professionals from 160 countries.

“To handle these multidimensional threats, we need to have an overall collaborative, multidimensional, holistic approach to cybersecurity where all parties can collaborate and support to achieve a common goal, which is making sure our country, our enterprises, our market remains fully protected.

 From that perspective, Huawei is fully open to collaborating with national bodies, with international organisations, with the standard bodies to support and contribute our solutions, our insights, and our capabilities,” Malik said.

“All over the world, government or private establishments face cyberattacks every day. Private and government entities in Qatar are no exception,” Malik said.

“If we do not remain vigilant and actively defend our enterprises, government firms, and critical services, we will be unable to deliver the extraordinary level of service for which Qatar is renowned - whether in public safety, policing, ambulance response, vital networks, or the broader business sector,” Malik said.

The senior Huawei security strategist said Qatar has done a tremendous job in withstanding cyber threats over the years while delivering world-class events, pointing out to the flawless digital execution of the 2022 FIFA World Cup and a steady calendar of worldclass events since then. 

“If you look at Qatar, especially how Qatar has executed flawless world-class events such as the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, it is clear that top-notch cybersecurity measures have been used,” Malik said.

“Cybersecurity is a team sport - we all have to win every single time. Huawei is fully open to working with Qatar’s National Cyber Security Agency (NCSA), international bodies, and local enterprises toward a common goal: keeping the country and its markets fully protected,” Malik said.

On the concept of data residency, which relates to where the organisation’s data is stored, the Huawei official stressed it follows NCSA guidance.

“According to the NCSA policies, they encourage the free flow of data for the fulfillment of legitimate business interests, authorized by the customers and validated by the contracts,” Malik said.

Malik said Huawei has no access to the data of any customer without the client’s permission.

“Only when customers allow it, then we have access, and then we do our contractual fulfilment of responsibilities. So the customer has full control.

“We fully respect our contracts. If customers’ contractual requirement is that their data should remain within their network, within their boundaries, within their devices, Huawei, of course, follows that,” the Chief Security Officer stressed.

The official also reiterated Huawei’s commitment to skills development, citing its longrunning educational programmes and scholarships, regional ICT competitions and active internship schemes.

“We have active collaboration with almost all the universities. For talent development, we have the ‘Seeds for the Future’ program. We have ICT competition programs. We have internship programs. Even right now, I think more than 30 students are doing internships in various departments at Huawei,” Malik highlighted.

“We actively collaborate and we fully support the national initiative of developing talents on different levels. When it comes to cybersecurity, at the same time, whenever the National Cyber Security Agency organizes such campaigns, Huawei actively participates and fully supports such initiatives,” Malik added.

“Because cybersecurity is a team sport, we all have to play together to win it. And we have to win it every single time. Losing is not an option.”