Cohesity leverages AI and cloud flexibility to boost cyber resilience in the Middle East

The Middle East is moving faster than many regions in adopting advanced data protection and cyber resilience solutions, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). With increasing digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, government bodies, banks and healthcare providers are seeking ways to protect sensitive data, comply with regulations and extract business value from their information.

“We’re seeing the Middle East and the UAE, specifically as a government, putting a lot of laws in place to help protect data. We’re seeing things like AI ethics to help embrace AI in an ethical way. And we are very well positioned,” says Johnny Karam, managing director and vice-president of international emerging markets at Cohesity.

Karam explains that his team works with government entities and large institutions to not only meet emerging regulatory requirements but also secure and leverage their data.

“Recently, we’re seeing more and more customers asking us, with all the data that we are helping them protect and secure, ‘How can we create business value from it?’ This is where we are applying our AI models on all the data that we are protecting to give our customers the ability to benefit from all the data they’ve been gathering and growing over the years.”

The shift towards AI-driven insight reflects a broader transformation in enterprise data management. In an interview with ComputerWeekly, Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen emphasised the need to move beyond traditional storage and backup. “We’ve modernised the discussion from traditional storage to security. Generative AI on top of data is the next frontier for enterprises everywhere, including the UAE and wider Middle East,” he said.

AI-powered platforms can detect anomalies, scan for threats and deliver actionable intelligence functions that conventional backup tools cannot provide. Government and financial institutions are showing the strongest demand for these capabilities. 

“We are applying our AI models on all the data that we are protecting to give our customers the ability to benefit from all the data they’ve been gathering and growing over the years”

Johnny Karam, Cohesity

“There’s a lot of regulation from the government that is pushing them to stay on their toes in terms of compliance with the data, securing the data, being able to recover the data in a fast way, and benefit from AI,” Karam notes.

Healthcare is also a priority, with hospitals modernising operations and deploying AI to enhance efficiency while defending patient data against ransomware attacks. “We see ourselves helping healthcare protect patient data and ensuring that it is secure and always recoverable,” he adds.

Data residency, regulatory compliance and hybrid cloud deployments remain central concerns for CIOs. Organisations need to balance compliance with operational efficiency, and this requires flexible deployment models.

“Every single CIO I sit with is asking me those things. They say, ‘How can you help us with compliance?’ From a compliance perspective, we have it baked into our solution,” says Karam.

Data classification and on-premise options allow institutions to meet regulatory requirements while leveraging cloud capabilities for less sensitive workloads.

By combining AI, compliance support and hybrid cloud flexibility, enterprises in the UAE and wider Middle East are turning data protection into a strategic advantage. The region’s rapid digital adoption, coupled with increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, has made intelligent, AI-driven cyber resilience not just a technical requirement, but a business imperative.