Industrial cybersecurity vendor Dragos announced a public–private partnership with the UAE Cyber Security Council (CSC) to establish OT Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the UAE, under the nation’s ‘Make it in Emirates’ Forum, representing a milestone in advancing the UAE’s national cyber resilience and digital sovereignty.
The Centre of Excellence will support the UAE’s ambition to localize advanced cybersecurity capabilities, accelerate homegrown innovation, and build a world-class cyber workforce, positioning the country as a regional and global hub for cybersecurity excellence.
This announcement reflects Dragos’s deep commitment to the UAE’s national strategies and its vision of “Shared Ownership. Trusted Capability. Sustainable Cyber Value.”
Through the partnership, Dragos will provide an operational technology environment where practitioners can run through real-world attack and defense scenarios and build skills in OT/ICS security.
“Industrial and critical infrastructure in the UAE and the broader Gulf region faces real and growing threats, and the same threat groups we track globally are active here,” Robert M. Lee, CEO and co-founder at Dragos, said in a media statement. This Centre of Excellence gives operators in the region a place to see exactly how OT environments are monitored, how threats are detected, and what effective defense looks like in practice. Building that local understanding and capability is an important starting point, and we are proud to invest in talent, innovation, and long-term shared value with the Cyber Security Council.”
“The Council’s ongoing efforts, in collaboration with international partners, to establish Cybersecurity Centers of Excellence come amid an unprecedented surge in cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure,” Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity for the UAE Government, said. “These serve as advanced, specialized platforms that enable the proactive anticipation of cyber threats, while providing the necessary mechanisms for continuous monitoring and the early detection of anomalous behavioral patterns in cyber incidents before they escalate. They also support the modeling of effective defense strategies and their practical application within real operational environments.”
Al Kuwaiti added, “As we take pride in investing in specialized talent and technological innovation, we are laying the foundation for sustainable, long-term shared value, strengthening national readiness and cyber resilience to counter the threats of tomorrow that are already emerging today.”
Earlier this month, the UAE Cybersecurity Council and Nozomi Networks announced a collaboration aimed at strengthening the cybersecurity resilience of the UAE’s critical infrastructure and industrial sectors. The collaboration supports the UAE’s national vision to enhance cyber resilience across OT and Internet of Things (IoT) environments, providing deeper visibility, advanced threat detection, and intelligence‑driven security for critical national assets across energy, utilities, transportation, manufacturing, and smart infrastructure.
