News

Information technology (IT) in the Middle East

• June 23, 2025 23 Jun'25

  Widening Middle Eastern war increases cyber risk

  With the entry of the US into the widening Middle Eastern conflict, cyber risk is likely to increase across the board

• June 23, 2025 23 Jun'25

  Europe’s semiconductor leaders are racing to meet energy demands

  Innovative ideas are discussed at Leti Innovation Days, as datacentres swell under the weight of AI workloads

• June 20, 2025 20 Jun'25

  Dutch cloud pioneers face the hard limits of digital sovereignty

  The Netherlands’ ambitious talk of digital independence meets the unforgiving economics of global cloud dominance

• June 19, 2025 19 Jun'25

  UBS employee data leaked after cyber attack on supplier

  UBS and fellow Swiss bank Pictet have been affected by a cyber attack on a procurement service provider

• June 13, 2025 13 Jun'25

  Fusion and AI: How private sector tech is powering progress at ITER

  When commercial AI meets the world’s most ambitious science experiment, nuclear fusion, surprising things start to happen

• June 10, 2025 10 Jun'25

  Third-party security weaknesses threaten Europe’s big banks

  Security breaches via third parties increased by 25% at Europe’s largest finance firms

• May 23, 2025 23 May'25

  Data embassies and US embargo halt give Saudi AI hope

  Gulf autocracy gets access to powerful AI chips subject to export ban and pursues legal reforms to make foreign computing firms feel comfortable about putting their data there

• May 19, 2025 19 May'25

  Trump visit bolsters Saudi AI

  A new AI datacentre is among the initiatives the White House announced during the president’s Middle East visits

• May 07, 2025 07 May'25

  Europe leads shift from cyber security ‘headcount gap’ to skills-based hiring

  Research from Sans Institute reveals European organisations are leading a global shift in hiring priorities, driven by regional regulatory frameworks

• May 06, 2025 06 May'25

  EU acts to mend ailing AI competitiveness

  Lack of private investors, malformed markets and over-regulation present a big challenge for European officials trying to turn the continent into a global AI superpower

• April 24, 2025 24 Apr'25

  Saudi Arabia to be global kingpin of AI grunt work for US leader Groq

  Saudi Arabia is positioning itself to take on huge volumes of the grunt work required by the artificial intelligence sector

• April 16, 2025 16 Apr'25

  Saudi Arabia struggling to reach global leadership in deeptech

  Petrostate monarchy trying to build surrogate industry made of foreign startups because own ecosystem is too immature

• March 03, 2025 03 Mar'25

  European fintech must take different path to Trump’s US on diversity

  Leading light in women in fintech says Europe must take separate path to Trump’s US on diversity, equity and inclusion

• February 19, 2025 19 Feb'25

  European and African tech skills programme could increase economic ties

  Africa is a continent on the up, and if Europe wants to form lucrative relationships with its nations, it must have something to trade. IT skills and knowledge exchanges unlock opportunities

• February 13, 2025 13 Feb'25

  Baltic skills programme to help reduce European skills gap via Africa

  Lithuanian project sets out to connect professionals in Africa with European businesses in need of skills

• February 12, 2025 12 Feb'25

  AI at Leap 2025: Huge potential but a threat to the fabric of society?

  Thought leaders in artificial intelligence gathered at Saudi Arabia’s Leap 2025 tech show to set out the next steps for enterprise AI and agentic AI, but also AI’s potential danger to human society

• February 11, 2025 11 Feb'25

  Saudi puts $15bn into AI as experts debate next steps

  The kingdom’s Leap 2025 tech show is the backdrop for huge investment, plus debate over the future of artificial intelligence as a productivity tool but which can also potentially undermine human society

• February 04, 2025 04 Feb'25

  IT supplier helps address ‘overwhelming’ volumes of data from space

  CGI is building on its decade-long relationship with the European Space Agency, and as more and more satellites entering orbit, its role in processing data is not set to diminish

• January 07, 2025 07 Jan'25

  Saudi Arabia calls for humanitarian AI after tightening screws on rights protesters

  Oppressive state wants global digital identity system at the heart of all AI, to make it trustworthy and prevent it being used for ‘unauthorised surveillance’

• January 03, 2025 03 Jan'25

  Corporate cover-up behind world-beating cyber security record in Middle East

  Report ranking Gulf corporations ahead of US and EU counterparts for cyber security has sparked debate about the region’s tendency for secrecy and state control

• December 24, 2024 24 Dec'24

  Top 10 EMEA stories of 2024

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 Europe, Middle East and Africa stories of 2024

• December 09, 2024 09 Dec'24

  Bahrain faces legal action after planting Pegasus spyware on UK blogger

  A court has given the go-ahead to UK-based blogger Yusuf Al-Jamri to seek damages from the Kingdom of Bahrain after it deployed spyware from Israel’s NSO Group to hack his phone

• November 27, 2024 27 Nov'24

  Dutch politicians raise concerns over Big Tech reliance

  Dutch political parties have warned about the Netherlands’ growing reliance on US tech giants

• November 26, 2024 26 Nov'24

  Russian threat actors poised to cripple power grid, UK warns

  UK government escalates cyber rhetoric in a speech at a Nato event, saying Russian advanced persistent threats stand ready to conduct cyber attacks that could ‘turn off the lights for millions’

• November 22, 2024 22 Nov'24

  EU promotes plan to usurp US Big Tech with digital market

  European Union is at an important point in its plan to build a single market and strengthen its cloud computing sector

• November 04, 2024 04 Nov'24

  Financiers isolate Middle East over sanctions-evading paytech

  Cross-border payment system loses support of association of global central banks

• October 29, 2024 29 Oct'24

  Tata Consultancy Services to deliver Irish pension scheme

  Indian IT services giant adds to its growing customer base in the pensions sector with Irish contract win

• October 23, 2024 23 Oct'24

  Democracy campaigner to sue Saudi Arabia over Pegasus and QuaDream spyware in UK court

  Pro-democracy campaigner Yahya Assiri given permission to file legal action in London court against Saudi Arabia over its use of Israeli spyware

• September 27, 2024 27 Sep'24

  UK on high alert over Iranian spear phishing attacks, says NCSC

  The NCSC and counterpart agencies in the US have issued a warning over enhanced Iranian spear phishing activity targeting politicians, journalists, activists and others with an interest in Middle Eastern affairs

• September 20, 2024 20 Sep'24

  UN body urges ‘globally inclusive and distributed’ AI governance

  A United Nations body set up to investigate the international governance of AI says the nature of how the technology currently operates requires a global approach to regulation that prioritises equity and inclusion

• August 28, 2024 28 Aug'24

  Telegram founder Pavel Durov questioned over cyber crime charges

  Billionaire founder of Telegram accused of failing to co-operate with law enforcement requests for lawful interception

• July 11, 2024 11 Jul'24

  Inside Israel’s cyber security operations

  An emergency phone line allows cyber security analysts at the Israel Computer Emergency Response Team to map threats against national infrastructure

• July 09, 2024 09 Jul'24

  Lessons from war: How Israel is fighting Iranian state-backed hacking

  The general director of the Israel National Cyber Directorate talks about the rise in cyber attacks and what lessons the country has gleaned to defend against hacking from foreign parties

• June 26, 2024 26 Jun'24

  Israel’s cyber chief calls for international front against Iranian hackers

  Israel’s cyber chief has called for international action against Iran over state-backed hacking

• June 13, 2024 13 Jun'24

  Q&A: Adalbjorn Thorolfsson on IT project management in Iceland

  With a small, but very sophisticated population, Iceland has unique ways of keeping up with the rest of the world in the IT sector. Adalbjorn Thorolfsson, president of the Icelandic Project Management Association, describes some lessons for the rest...

• June 07, 2024 07 Jun'24

  European data chief prepares bid to get UK to join EU digital single market

  Data initiative Gaia-X is trying to plug the UK into a planned digital European single market, as the EU seeks to extend the reach of vast and controversial data laws over global supply chains

• March 05, 2024 05 Mar'24

  Dutch organisations start building a federated European cloud

  The ‘European cloud services in an open federated ecosystem’ (ECOFED) project is co-funded by the Dutch government and will run from 2024 to 2027

• February 09, 2024 09 Feb'24

  Europe carves out niche in quantum computing

  As the US, China and Europe accelerate investment in quantum computing, Europe is beginning to develop its own unique position in the fledgling global ecosystem

• February 07, 2024 07 Feb'24

  How Iranian cyber ops pivoted to target Israel after 7 October attacks

  Microsoft has shared new intelligence on how Iranian government-aligned threat actors have turned their fire on Israel over the past four months

• January 22, 2024 22 Jan'24

  Upgraded Arabic large language model is twice as big

  Techniques that were used to double the power of what was already the largest LLM for Arabic can now be applied to other languages whose native speakers do not yet have access to AI

• January 15, 2024 15 Jan'24

  Santander bank added 4,500 tech staff last year

  Santander added thousands of IT staff to its global operation last year, as part of its digital transformation

• December 22, 2023 22 Dec'23

  Top 10 Middle East stories of 2023

  Middle Eastern countries are on digital journeys, with many pinning their futures on expertise in advanced technologies

• December 04, 2023 04 Dec'23

  Atos selected for UEFA Euro 2024 IT contract

  IT services company Atos will deliver on-site and remote IT services for next year’s international football event in Germany

• November 08, 2023 08 Nov'23

  AI Summit not the place for human rights, says French finance minister

  Despite commitments at the UK’s AI Safety Summit to respect and protect human rights, the French finance minister said it was not the right forum to discuss signatories' human rights records

• October 18, 2023 18 Oct'23

  What are the cyber risks from the latest Middle Eastern conflict?

  The outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel in October 2023 has seen a wide variety of accompanying cyber attacks from hacktivists and other groups. We look at the risks to organisations

• October 17, 2023 17 Oct'23

  Hacktivist attacks against Israeli websites mirror attacks following Russian invasion of Ukraine

  Hacktivists supporting Gaza and Palestine have launched hundreds of website defacement attacks against Israeli websites, mirroring the pattern of attacks that occurred after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

• October 13, 2023 13 Oct'23

  UAE makes significant contribution to AI computing power

  UAE technology holding company G42 recently began a partnership with US-based Cerebras Systems to build a cluster of supercomputers and a set of accompanying technologies that will speed up the training process for large language models

• October 04, 2023 04 Oct'23

  UK emphasises EU split by kicking digital trade scheme into long grass

  Former Gaia-X CEO talks exclusively to Computer Weekly about UK inertia on cross-border data tech

• October 03, 2023 03 Oct'23

  Top science journal faced secret attacks from Covid conspiracy theory group

  A conspiratorial group of extreme Brexit lobbyists mounted an extraordinary campaign against one of the world’s most prestigious science journals – part of a series of joint investigations between Byline Times and Computer Weekly

• September 12, 2023 12 Sep'23

  European enterprises to spend more on generative IT to close gap on US

  European organisations are upping their spending on generative AI innovation, but face challenges recruiting the right people to support this