Emile Abou Saleh, Regional Director, MEA at Proofpoint, emphasizes showcasing agentic AI and human-centric security at GITEX 2025, helping Middle Eastern organizations strengthen compliance, protect data, and transform human risk into resilience.
What are Proofpoint’s key objectives for participating in GITEX this year, and how does the event support your mission to advance cybersecurity across the Middle East?
Across the Middle East, there is a growing recognition that people are both an organization’s greatest asset and its biggest risk. In fact, more than two-thirds of UAE CISOs identify human error as the biggest vulnerability in their defenses. This is why Proofpoint takes a human-centric approach to cybersecurity, ensuring employees are protected from targeted threats, sensitive data is safeguarded, and users become more resilient against attacks through our integrated suite of cloud-based solutions.
At GITEX 2025, we will showcase our comprehensive, adaptive, AI-driven, human-centric security architecture. The event is a vital platform to engage with partners and customers, address their challenges, and raise awareness of how organizations can transform people from a perceived weakness into their strongest defense.
Proofpoint recently launched its agentic AI-powered Human Communications Intelligence platform. Can you explain how this breakthrough transforms real-time risk detection and compliance for enterprises in the region?
Our new Human Communications Intelligence platform powered by agentic AI marks a real turning point for organizations across the region.
It moves compliance and risk management from being reactive to truly proactive. Instead of waiting for incidents to be reviewed after the fact, our technology can understand what’s being said across communication channels in real time – identifying risky behavior, potential misconduct, or compliance issues as they happen. This allows legal, compliance, and security teams to take immediate, informed action before risks escalate.
How does Proofpoint’s use of AI—particularly agentic AI—go beyond traditional keyword-based detection to interpret human intent and behavior across communication channels?
Traditional systems look for specific words or phrases – but people don’t always communicate risks that way. Our agentic AI takes a more human approach. It understands the intent and context behind messages, not just the words used. This means it can pick up on subtle cues across emails, chats, and collaboration tools to understand what someone actually means, rather than relying on rigid keyword lists. The result is far more accurate detection and fewer false alarms.
With insider threats and collaboration tool misuse on the rise, how is Proofpoint helping Middle Eastern organizations secure platforms like Slack, Teams, and Zoom?
Collaboration tools like Slack, Teams, and Zoom have become the backbone of modern work, but they’ve also opened new doors for data loss and misuse. We’re helping organizations across the Middle East secure these platforms by unifying data protection, insider threat management, and AI governance under one umbrella. Our technology can spot and stop sensitive data from being shared inappropriately, even by AI agents or chatbots, and ensures every interaction, whether human or machine, is compliant and secure.
How does Proofpoint’s AI-powered Digital Communications Governance portfolio help regulated industries in the Middle East meet compliance, legal, and security requirements more proactively?
Financial institutions and other regulated organizations in the Middle East face increasing pressure to meet strict data and communications compliance standards. Our Digital Communications Governance portfolio helps them stay ahead of those challenges. It captures and monitors over 80 different communication channels, automates supervision and eDiscovery, and now includes UAE-based data hosting to support local data sovereignty requirements.
With AI-powered tools that surface and summarize risk, compliance teams can act faster and more confidently – protecting their people, data, and reputation.
Looking ahead, how do you see agentic AI and real-time behavioral intelligence shaping the future of cybersecurity strategy for enterprises in the Middle East?
The rise of the agentic workspace, where people and AI assistants work side by side, is reshaping cybersecurity. Traditional, rule-based tools can’t keep pace with AI-powered threats or the complexity of collaboration environments. Agentic AI and real-time behavioral intelligence are the keys to the future, enabling enterprises to detect risks proactively and govern both people and AI agents in real time.
Combined with regional data sovereignty requirements, this approach allows organizations to unify security and compliance, reduce false positives, and build adaptive defenses against evolving threats in the Middle East.