Dubai, UAE, 8th May 2025, ZEX PR WIRE, SANS Institute, the global leader in cybersecurity training and certification, is participating in GISEC Global 2025 (6-8 May 2025) at the Dubai World Trade Center. This year, SANS Institute joins GISEC Global as a strategic partner, highlighting the company’s long-term commitment to developing cybersecurity talent in the region.

From May 6 to 8, SANS also will host the SANS GISEC Academy. Located in Hall 4, SANS GISEC Academy is a community-led initiative offering three days of free-to-attend technical training sessions led by SANS Certified Instructors. These sessions are part of SANS’ mission to upskill defenders and contribute meaningfully to the UAE’s national and regional cybersecurity posture.

Each day will focus on a key cybersecurity domain. On day 1, instructor Jean-François Maes will lead a full-day track on Offensive Operations, covering topics such as malware evasion, OSINT exposure in cloud environments, and common vulnerabilities discovered over a decade of penetration testing. Day 2 shifts to Cyber Defense with Ian Reynolds, who will explore deception-based defenses, the role of AI and deepfakes in modern threat landscapes, and advanced threat hunting techniques. Day 3 will be led by Michael Hoffman, focusing on ICS/OT cybersecurity, with insights drawn from real-world incidents such as the Colonial Pipeline and Ukraine grid attacks. The sessions are tailored for cybersecurity professionals, analysts, SOC managers, and decision-makers looking to enhance their tactical and strategic defense skills.

“In the Middle East and beyond, digital infrastructure is under increasing pressure from AI-powered threats that are more deceptive, adaptive, and persistent,” said Ned Baltagi, Managing Director for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, SANS Institute. “From deepfake-enabled fraud to intelligent ransomware strains that evade detection, cybersecurity teams must shift from reactive defense to intelligence-driven prevention. At SANS, we’re focused on equipping professionals with the practical skills and threat context they need to defend against this next wave of AI-fueled attacks. Cybersecurity is not just a professional responsibility, but a shared priority for national safety and resilience.”

In addition to the academy, Rob T Lee, Chief of Research at SANS Institute, will take the GISEC stage for two key sessions. On May 6, Rob will speak on the Dark Stage, presenting ‘The AI Acceleration: Defending Critical Infrastructure Against Emerging Intelligent Threats’. His talk will highlight the growing use of AI in cyberattacks, the evolving “Volt/Salt Typhoon” methodology, and data-driven counter-defense strategies. On May 7, Rob will join a panel discussion on the Critical Infrastructure Stage exploring how precision AI and machine learning can secure operational technology environments.

“Attackers are no longer bound by time or complexity. What used to take weeks can now be done in minutes with tools that generate believable malware, deepfakes, and targeted phishing at scale,” said Lee. “We’re not facing yesterday’s threats moving faster, we’re facing a new kind of battlefield. Defenders need to adapt, outpace, and outthink. The hardest part isn’t finding the threat but in keeping up with how quickly it changes.”

Attendees are encouraged to visit the SANS team at Stand D75, Hall 7, where senior executives will be available to share insights and connect with the cybersecurity community.

To continue its mission of upskilling cybersecurity professionals across the region, SANS will also be hosting four training events throughout the Middle East in May: SANS Doha (May 10–15), SANS Riyadh (May 10–22), SANS Abu Dhabi (May 18–23), and SANS Dubai (May 25–30).

For more information and to register for these events, please visit: https://www.sans.org/mlp/middle-east-turkey-africa

About SANS Institute

The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Today, SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest provider of cybersecurity training and certification to professionals in government and commercial institutions worldwide. Renowned SANS instructors teach more than 60 courses at in-person and virtual cybersecurity events and OnDemand. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates practitioner skills through more than 35 hands-on, technical certifications in cybersecurity. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master’s and bachelor’s degrees, graduate certificates, and an undergraduate certificate in cybersecurity. SANS Security Awareness, a division of SANS, provides organizations with a complete and comprehensive security awareness solution, enabling them to manage their “human” cybersecurity risk easily and effectively. SANS also delivers a wide variety of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, webcasts, podcasts, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet’s early warning system–the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to support and educate the global information security community.

Industry-First Solution Sets a New Standard for Attack Surface Reduction and Endpoint Security Through Dynamic, User-Tailored Protection

Dubai, UAE, 8th May 2025, ZEX PR WIRE, Bitdefender, a global cybersecurity leader, today announced the Middle East debut of Bitdefender GravityZone Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction (PHASR), the industry’s first endpoint security solution to dynamically tailor hardening for each user—ensuring that security configurations align precisely with user-intended privileges and behaviors and continuously adapt to shrink attack surfaces. The solution will be unveiled at GISEC Global, the region’s largest cybersecurity event.

“Legitimate tools and Living-Off-the-land (LOTL) techniques are now involved in over 70% of major security incidents, according to our investigations,” said Dragos Gavrilut, vice president of threat research at Bitdefender. “GravityZone PHASR is the only purpose-built solution designed to combat this growing epidemic by precisely controlling access to tools like PowerShell and WMIC—effectively stopping LOTL-style attacks at their source.”

GravityZone PHASR reduces attack surfaces, mitigates unnecessary risk, and enforces compliance by analyzing individual user behaviors such as application usage and access to resources—and dynamically restricting tools or privileges that fall outside established norms.

Gartner® forecasts, “By 2030, 60% of exposure management tasks and remediation will use intelligent automation, up from 10% today,”¹ which we believe highlights an industry shift toward preventative, automated risk mitigation. According to Gartner, “Attack surface reduction includes all technologies that reduce an organization’s exposure to compromise…The common idea behind these technologies is that there is no detection required. Attack surface reduction applies to all attacks, even the most evasive.”²

GravityZone PHASR delivers a powerful, proactive approach to reducing threat exposure and compliance risk. Offered as an add-on to Bitdefender GravityZone—the company’s flagship unified security and risk analytics platform—PHASR is built on years of advanced machine learning (ML) applied to users, groups, applications, and endpoints within GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR). It leverages proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) to create profiles of behavioral norms across individuals and groups, focusing on key areas such as data access, application usage, and security permissions. This enables a comprehensive assessment of vulnerabilities and potential attack vectors impacting the business.

Key Benefits of GravityZone PHASR include:

• Drastically reduces attack surfaces – GravityZone PHASR correlates user behaviors with active threat vectors and attacks. This determines the optimal attack surface configuration, unique to each user, enabling organizations to minimize the attack surface without compromising operational efficiency.

• Proactively stops LOTL attack techniques – GravityZone PHASR restricts access to Living-Off-the Land-Binaries (LOLBins) before exploitation, reducing data breach risks, alert fatigue and security costs. It delivers targeted hardening that minimizes access to tools and resources for users who don’t require them for their daily tasks.

• Defeats repeatable attack patterns – GravityZone PHASR tailors defenses to each system, making it harder for attackers to reuse the same techniques across environments. Threat actors often replicate successful methods once they bypass a security tool—PHASR disrupts this by ensuring detections behave differently from system to system.

“Innovation in cybersecurity must solve real problems—not add complexity,” said Andrei Florescu, president and general manager at Bitdefender Business Solutions Group. “GravityZone PHASR is a true game changer that strengthens endpoint security by tackling today’s most pressing challenges—including stealthy LOTL attack techniques. By applying tailored security controls to each user based on behavior, PHASR minimizes unnecessary access, hardens environments, and helps organizations stay ahead as attack surfaces grow.”

At GISEC Global

Bitdefender will showcase GravityZone PHASR in Hall 5, Stand C108 at GISEC Global, taking place at the Dubai World Trade Center between May 6-8.

In addition, Bitdefender will host a GravityZone PHASR launch seminar at the conference that will take place in the GISEC Academy Stage 2, Hall 3 on May 7 from 11:00 – 12:30pm. For those interested in attending, please contact Lucian Lupascu at llupascu@bitdefender.com.

Availability

Bitdefender GravityZone PHASR is available now. To learn more or schedule a demo, visit here.

¹Gartner, Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Preemptive Cybersecurity, Luis Castillo, Lawrence Pingree, Carl Manion, Ruggero Contu, November 25, 2024.

²Gartner, Reference Architecture Brief: Endpoint Security, Eric Grenier, February 16, 2024

Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

About Bitdefender

Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader delivering best-in-class threat prevention, detection, and response solutions worldwide. Guardian over millions of consumers, enterprises, and government environments, Bitdefender is one of the industry’s most trusted experts for eliminating threats, protecting privacy, digital identity and data, and enabling cyber resilience. With deep investments in research and development, Bitdefender Labs discovers hundreds of new threats each minute and validates billions of threat queries daily. The company has pioneered breakthrough innovations in antimalware, IoT security, behavioral analytics, and artificial intelligence and its technology is licensed by more than 180 of the world’s most recognized technology brands. Founded in 2001, Bitdefender has customers in 170+ countries with offices around the world. For more information, visit https://www.bitdefender.com.

Trusted. Always.

Contact:

Steve Fiore

Bitdefender

1-954-776-6262

sfiore@bitdefender.com