A strategic forum for operational technology leadership - convening regulators, CISOs and industrial engineers in Dammam.
TThe Kingdom's industrial landscape is undergoing one of the largest digital transformations, powered by Vision 2030, smart infrastructure investments, and the rapid rise of connected operations. Across oil & gas, power & utilities, petrochemicals, water & waste, nuclear manufacturing, mining & metals, transport & logistics, smart cities, government & critical infrastructure, operational technology (OT) environments are evolving into highly automated, data-driven ecosystems designed to maximize efficiency, productivity, and operational performance.
Yet as these systems become more intelligent and interconnected, a critical question emerges: are they becoming more resilient, or more exposed?
Highlights from the most recent OT Security First flagship edition - the same dialogue platform now arriving in Dammam.
OT Security First - Jubail is a world-class, one-day strategic dialogue platform dedicated to advancing industrial cybersecurity and operational resilience across the Kingdom.
OT Security First Jubail 2026 is certified by the CPD Certification Service. Attendees receive a CPD certificate after attending the event.
Earn up to 7 hours of CPD points.
Register Now→One of the most strategically significant industrial landscapes in the Middle East.
The industrial focal point of national resilience.
The independent advisors shaping the technical agenda, and the speakers taking the stage on industrial cyber resilience across the Kingdom.
Director General, Oman National CERT
Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology
Chief Information Officer
National Metal Manufacturing and Casting Company (Maadaniyah)
Vice President | Digitalization
Avanceon Middle East & South Asia
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COO
DSShield
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Vendor land-grab: Darktrace first Saudi office (Jan 2026); OPSWAT Riyadh office, 4x KSA growth; Yokogawa AI/Cyber CoE Dhahran (Feb 2026); Siemens KSA software office (Feb 2026); Dragos Riyadh HQ + UAE CoE; Nozomi acquired by Mitsubishi
Dragos Y/R 2026: industrial ransomware +49% YoY (~3,300 victims); PYROXENE wipes vs ME infrastructure Jun 2025; BAUXITE (CyberAv3ngers-linked) hit ME oil & gas, water, chemicals
RC/JY cities passed SAR 1.5T cumulative investment; Amiral $11bn Jubail cracker (ops 2027); 45+ Jubail turnarounds in 2026
MEA OT security market $4.36bn (2025) growing to $9.65bn (2030), 17.2% CAGR; energy fastest vertical
ECC-2:2024 requires cybersecurity roles to be held by Saudi nationals
Electric (~$1B, Feb 2026); Claroty $150M Series F
SACS-210 (Feb 2026) adds a dedicated OT controls section; transition window closed 26 Aug 2026
50% of OT organisations had at least one intrusion in the last year
7 December 2026 · Dammam, Saudi Arabia · 09:00 – 15:55
Welcome & Opening Remarks by the Organiser
Topic & speaker TBC
GCC & Global Collaboration on OT Security: What Are the World's Leading Industrial Nations Doing and What Can Saudi Arabia Learn?
Reserved for Platinum Sponsor DSShield
Mesfer Almesfer, Chief Operating Officer (COO), DSShield
Reserved for Gold Sponsor Yokogawa
Mohammed Shoukat Ali, GM & Head Global Cybersecurity CoE, Yokogawa
Under Attack: Incident Response, Threat Detection & OT Resilience Across the Kingdom's Industrial Corridor
Water. Power. 700,000 Attacks a Day. And One Question: Who Is Controlling Your PLC?
Why network monitoring alone cannot secure critical infrastructure and how endpoint-level authentication and pre-execution access control can protect legacy PLCs without changing existing systems.
Dr. Godfrey Gaston MBE, Cybersecurity Specialist, swIDch
Reserved for ACET Solutions & Avanceon
Mubarik Mustafa, CEO, ACET Solutions
Topic TBC
Faisal Althobaiti, Sr. Cybersecurity and Digitalization Engineer, Ma'aden
Topic TBC
Eng. Ali Altamni, Senior Cybersecurity Leader, SABIC
Your AI Has Never Seen Your Plant
Building industrial intelligence below Level 3.5
Tahir Saleem, Chief Innovation Officer, SIS Industrial Cybersecurity
Boosting OT operational resilience
OT environments have become prime targets for cyberattacks, but preventing an attack is no longer the only measure of success. This session will explore the key steps to understand communications between industrial assets, reduce the risk of lateral movement, and strengthen operational resilience in the event of a breach.
Mohannad Meri, Senior Sales Engineer, Illumio
Standards, procurement & supply chain: How do we build OT security into the fabric of Saudi industrial operations?
Clean Is Not the Same as Safe
Ahmed Abdelhamid, Solution Engineer, OPSWAT
Building an OT security operations capability: Lessons from Saudi Arabia's most critical facilities
What a fit-for-purpose OT SOC looks like — detection engineering for industrial protocols, threat hunting in ICS environments, and integrating OT visibility into a national security operations programme.
Abdulrahman Al Musfir, Regional Cybersecurity Officer - MEA, Schneider Electric
AI Beyond the Pilot: Building Secure and Resilient AI for Critical Infrastructure
Ahmed T Alawami, Head of AI & Digital Transformation (Energy & Utilities), Saudi Energy
The KSA Dialogue: What must Saudi Arabia's oil & gas, petrochemical, and government sectors commit to in the next 12 months?
Awards Ceremony & Official Close
OT Security First Jubail · 7 December 2026 · Dammam, Saudi Arabia · Agenda is subject to change
