Track Record

17+ years across threat intelligence, AI security, and public policy. 100+ organizations, engagement across 100+ countries (34 with direct in-country travel), 20+ Securelist publications, 100+ speaking engagements, featured on CNN, BBC, Forbes, and Bloomberg. Training for Interpol, UNDP, SAMA, and ministries.

Featured

• OPECST: “Les nouveaux développements de l’intelligence artificielle” (Nov 2024) : Expert contributor to the French Parliamentary Office for Scientific and Technological Assessment report. Rapporteurs: Alexandre Sabatou (député), Patrick Chaize (sénateur), and Corinne Narassiguin (sénatrice). Sénat N° 170 / Assemblée Nationale N° 642. Contribution alongside OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, and Microsoft.
• Renaissance Numérique: The AI Dialogues (2024) : Invited expert contributor to the French think tank’s multi-stakeholder policy series on international AI governance. Geneva session alongside the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères, academics, and international organizations. Brussels session at UCLouvain. Contributions in Interim note #1 and Interim note #2 .
• ICANN SSR2 (2017-2019): Subject-matter expert on ICANN’s second DNS Security, Stability & Resiliency Review Team , the global governance review of the internet’s root DNS infrastructure.
• PhD, Information Security for Smart Cities: Brunel University London Business School, awarded April 2019. Thesis: “Investigating the Organizational Factors Influencing Information Security Management in the Context of Smart City Organizations.” Empirical study with 308 survey participants testing 11 organizational factors influencing information security management in smart cities (leadership attitude, legislative influence, workforce skill, vendor selection, ICT infrastructure utilization, intra- and inter-organizational collaboration, employee compliance, bureaucratic standing, adaptation to rapid technology development, and type of organization). Full thesis .
• Project document : the current strategic artifact, public download.

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Engagements by sector

Security programs, threat-intelligence engagements, and training delivered over 17+ years. 100+ organizations, engagement across 100+ countries, 34 with direct in-country travel.

Financial services. ~10 central banks, including Saudi SAMA, Qatar Central Bank, UAE Central Bank, Central Bank of Lebanon, Central Bank of Jordan, and Central Bank of Pakistan. 25+ commercial banks across MENA, EMEA, and South Asia, including Qatar National Bank, HSBC, Saudi National Bank (AlAhli), First Gulf Bank, Commercial International Bank (Egypt), and Standard Bank (South Africa). Tadawul stock exchange (KSA).

Energy and critical infrastructure. Tier-1 oil & gas: ARAMCO (Kaspersky’s largest global customer), SABIC, ADNOC, Qatar Petroleum. Utilities: Saudi Electricity Company. Industrial: Emirates Global Aluminum, Mubadala. Transport: Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport.

Government and sovereign. 50+ ministries, national authorities, royal guards, customs, tax authorities, and regulatory bodies across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan.

Telecoms and media. STC, Etisalat, DU, BTK (Turkey), major Lebanese mobile and ISP operators, Al Jazeera Media Network.

Law enforcement. 6 international bodies: Interpol, Europol, Afripol, GCCPOL, FBI, ILCERT. 8 national CERTs: France ANSSI, Jordan, Saudi MCIT, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain. FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 joint operation with Interpol. Interpol Letter of Appreciation. Police: Dubai Police, Sharjah Police, ministries of interior (Saudi, Kuwait).

French institutional work. Sénat (OPECST). See Policy contributions above.

Geographic reach. Engagement across 100+ countries; direct in-country travel to 34, spanning Europe, the Gulf (all 6 GCC states), the Levant and Central Asia, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the United States.

Build highlights

Threat-hunting machine-learning system (2023-2025). Conceived and built the AI / ML system for threat hunting that delivered Kaspersky’s 25 percentage-point improvement in advanced-attacks detection across the 400-million-user installed base. Approximately half of new leads in the Threat Intelligence service line (tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue by 2024) were attributed to discoveries by this system. 50+ significant breakthroughs across regions, 10,000 malware-related domains blocked. Persevered alone across multiple months against internal resistance and no dedicated resource allocation. Multiple peer-reviewed publications positioning the vendor as an AI / ML reference. Public source: Kaspersky press release on the 25% detection lift and the underlying Securelist article .

META research center build (2018-2025). Built the Middle East, Turkey and Africa research center of Kaspersky GReAT from a one-person operation into a seven-expert team across five countries with a 70-country regional remit. Ran the full recruitment lifecycle alone for the first three years with no HR support, interviewing hundreds of candidates. Senior hires included a former Deloitte senior manager and a former head of security at a major UK bank. Seven-figure annual team budget by 2025 with a sustained minimum 130% annual performance bonus. Team output during this tenure included most of the published APT operations (Tropic Trooper, CloudSorcerer, MuddyWater, DeathStalker, SparkRAT, and others).

Strategic intelligence service line (2015-2016). Participated in the founding of Kaspersky’s Threat Intelligence service line. Met VIP customers, collected feedback, translated requirements into technical specifications, and helped convert raw research output into a productised client offering. The founding team won the company’s internal “Team of the Year” recognition across an organisation of approximately 2,000 people. The service line generates tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

Earlier career engagements

Deloitte Saudi Arabia (2012-2013). Senior security and privacy consultant. Discovered a major vulnerability at a top-three Saudi commercial bank, demonstrated live on the production online-banking environment, leading to Deloitte engagement expansion. National PKI evaluation for a sensitive Saudi government entity (3 months) identified a major Remote Desktop Protocol vulnerability with national-scale implications, leading to multi-year reiteration of the engagement.

DCgroup, Lebanon (2008-2012). Security network engineer. Solo BGP / MPLS evaluation of a major regional telecom carrier (2 months) identified weaknesses and supported gap closure. Million-dollar IBM-Cisco Solaris network deployment for a major Middle East telecom (2010, six-month deployment, bespoke Cisco router configuration). Wireless mesh deployment for a major Middle East airport under SITA, the world leader in airport operations technology (2012), with self-studied vendor certifications passed without formal training. Bankmed Lebanon recovery work and a $0.5M telecom project across this period.