INTERVIEW: Karim Sabbagh, DarkMatter CEO — why digital security threats are key issue for governments and businesses

DarkMatter CEO Karim Sabbagh explains why digital security threats are key issue for governments and businesses. (Illustration by Luis Grañena)
Updated 08 March 2019
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INTERVIEW: Karim Sabbagh, DarkMatter CEO — why digital security threats are key issue for governments and businesses

LONDON: Cybersecurity looks like becoming the big theme of this year, and maybe for many years to come.

In a survey in January by the World Economic Forum, the threat of cyberattack was mentioned as one of the most serious global threats by business leaders; in the Middle East it was an especially worrying concern, second only to the oil price as a perceived risk.

For Karim Sabbagh, that is both a worry and a business opportunity. “The impact on economies and societies is huge. One of the challenges we have as captains of industry and as citizens is that we’re fascinated by the ability we have to digitize things in our day-to-day lives. But the sad part is that for every dollar we spend on new digital enablement, we’re not spending enough on cybersecurity,” he said last week on the sidelines of the IDEX defense exhibition in Abu Dhabi.

Sabbagh is CEO of DarkMatter, the Middle East’s home-grown digital security firm. Amid the guns, tanks and desert camouflage gear at IDEX, he explained to Arab News why we should all be taking the threat of cyberattack much more seriously, and spending a lot more money to defend against it.

“I can show you a demonstration in our booth. I can interfere with your transport network, your airport operations or your power grid. All these things aren’t fiction, they’re all for real,” he said against a backdrop of simulated warfare displays in the UAE’s big defense show.

“The people with bad intent will continue to evolve their techniques and their approaches. So the question isn’t how do I completely eliminate the known risks, but how can I prepare for threats in the future.”

The “people with bad intent” are enemy governments, industrial spies, ransom seekers, or people who “subscribe to a cause,” he said.

“From what we’ve seen … state-led attacks were the most prevalent. In private organizations, it was more about accessing data and using that data for your own commercial benefit,” he added, leaving the distinct impression he knew far more than he was willing to say publicly.

DarkMatter has been in business since 2015, the brainchild of Faisal Al-Bannai, the Emirati entrepreneur probably best known for the Axiom chain of telecom stores he has made into one of the best-known names in Middle East retail.

“He’s the single shareholder, and what he does is quite unique,” Sabbagh said. “Faisal is an entrepreneur, very driven and very passionate, with all the traits you’d like to see from entrepreneurs. He likes to see things through, and has a very long-term view.”

Sabbagh became CEO of the company last year after a stint with SES, a Luxembourg-based firm that provides satellite communications services to the US and other Western governments.

Before that, Lebanon-born Sabbagh worked for many years in the UAE and Saudi Arabia as a partner at management consulting firm Booz & Co., specializing in telecommunications and media.

He takes a broad view of the digital communications business in the five business sectors DarkMatter serves.

“How do I come up with technologies, devices and applications that can give me peace of mind that communication on these devices is secure? As we were doing work on those things, we also started engagement in areas concerning digital transformation, and questions about how the government provides new services that are digitized to all its citizens and residents,” he said.

A key part of DarkMatter’s work is the interaction of humans with technology. Sabbagh cites a recent cyber-attack in Singapore, in which the country’s medical records were accessed and compromised.

After a lengthy audit, the authorities discovered there were two main reasons. One was that on the network there were patches and fixes that weren’t done. So there was something that belonged to the realm of known vulnerability that wasn’t attended to,” he said.

“The second one was human capital. Through human intervention that attack was enabled, not by design but by accident. It boils down to technology and humans, the story of humanity since we invented fire.”

Why is the threat of cyberattack so high up the list of concerns for the Middle East? Sabbagh examined this in a work he co-authored in 2008 entitled “Oasis Economies,” which examined the social tensions created in traditional Arab societies going through the modernization process. He feels the lessons then still apply today.

“My conclusion is that as you try to liberalize economies but try to preserve the social safety net, as you try to liberalize the way people go about their daily lives while preserving the culture, you’re constantly trying to manage these tensions,” he said.

Highly digitized and progressive Arab youths live side by side with more conservative forces, he added.

Smart nations and smart business can’t be truly smart unless they secure their communications.

Karim Sabbagh, DarkMatter CEO

“In one family, even one household, you move from a very traditional way of living to the kids being astrophysicists, building probes to land on the moon. I’m not exaggerating,” he said.

“We have a highly digitized young population, not like the ageing populations of the West. These digital tools are available to them and they can be very productive, but if used inadequately they can be very harmful. So it doesn’t surprise me that the awareness around cyber threats in the region is very pronounced, and rightly so.”

These issues are especially pronounced in Saudi Arabia, which is going through the rapid transformational process of its Vision 2030 reform plan.

The modernization strategy involves the creation of a series of hi-tech hubs such as NEOM, the $500 billion megaproject involving a highly automated conurbation in the Kingdom’s northwest.

“In the old world, the industrial technology and the information technology operated in two different environments, but today there’s a big intersection between them,” Sabbagh said.

“The bigger the intersection the more efficient these businesses are, but the downside is that there’s a bigger attack surface from a cybersecurity standpoint. So the more countries such as Saudi Arabia advance their digitization processes, the more advanced they’ll become, but the downside is that the attack surface expands.”

The solution, he believes, is “defense, defense, defense” against cyberattack. “The best attack is defense,” he added.

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BIOGRAPHY

BORN

Beirut, 1963

EDUCATION

MS in Technology Management from Columbia University

DBA (Doctorate) in International Business Management from the International School of Management (Paris)

MBA and BBA from the American University of Beirut

American Century University, New Mexico, US

CAREER

Regional director for strategy, Leo Burnett Middle East

Senior vice president, Booz & Co.

CEO, DarkMatter

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Expansion of DarkMatter into Saudi Arabia is one of the priorities for later this year, moving the firm outside its UAE base and complementing existing business centers in Canada, Finland and India. “Saudi Arabia is probably one of the markets we’ll look at very closely,” he said.

One line of defense Sabbagh unveiled at IDEX was the new version of DarkMatter’s successful Katim phone, an ultra-secure and virtually indestructible mobile device that the firm is aiming at the defense, energy and government sectors.

The first version of the device was a big commercial success, but the second is designed to operate in even more hostile environments, with the promise of total data security.

“It’s designed to military standards in terms of ruggedness. Our engineers ran over it in a truck, and I wasn’t amused until they showed me a video of the phone working afterward,” he said.

“You can immerse it in water for 30 minutes and it still works. If the phone detects any attempt to try to interfere with it, either physically or via software, the data stored on it will automatically self-destruct. It’s a leap forward for us,” he added, emphasizing the “quantum resistant crypto protocols” that DarkMatter uses.

What do governments, always protective of data security, think of the new device? “The government is one of the users, as well as businesses where you have critical infrastructure being deployed,” he said.

Sabbagh summed up DarkMatter’s essential business philosophy: “Smart nations and smart business can’t be truly smart unless they can secure their communications. If they aren’t secure I can access their communications, hack them and interrupt their operations. People can give me all the smart slogans they want, but if I can hack you and interrupt your information, that’s not a very smart proposition.”

 


Oil Updates — prices gain on summer demand expectations despite wider economy woes

Updated 17 sec ago
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Oil Updates — prices gain on summer demand expectations despite wider economy woes

SINGAPORE: Oil prices rose on Wednesday, boosted by expectations of firm summer demand in the world’s two largest consumers, the United States and China, though gains were capped by analysts’ caution about the wider economy.
Prices have seesawed in a tight range as signs of steady demand from an increase in travel during the Northern Hemisphere summer have competed with concerns that US tariffs on trading partners will slow economic growth and fuel consumption.
Brent crude futures rose 36 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $69.07 a barrel by 8:46 a.m. Saudi time. US West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 47 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $66.99.
That reversed two days of declines as the market downplayed the potential for supply disruptions after US President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on purchases of Russian oil.
Major oil producers are pointing to signs of better economic growth in the second half of the year while data from China showed consistent growth.
“Strong seasonal demand is currently providing upward momentum to oil prices, as summer travel and industrial activity peak,” LSEG analysts said in a note.
“Increased gasoline consumption, especially in the US during the Fourth of July holiday period, has signalled robust fuel demand, helping offset bearish pressures from rising inventories and tariff concerns.”
China data showed growth slowed in the second quarter, but less than feared, in part because of frontloading to beat US tariffs. That eased some concerns about the economy of the world’s largest importer of crude.
The data also showed that China’s crude oil throughput in June jumped 8.5 percent from a year earlier, indicating stronger fuel demand.
However, some analysts saw the price rebound as temporary.
Much of the steadying of crude markets after two volatile sessions resulted from a mild technical correction rather than any significant shift in underlying fundamentals, said Phillip Nova’s senior market analyst Priyanka Sachdeva.
“Investors should monitor inflation and interest rate expectations in the United States as Trump’s continued push for broader tariffs could be inflationary and could dampen fuel demand in the medium term,” she said.
OPEC’s narrative remained more optimistic, Sachdeva said, pointing to the grouping’s monthly report on Tuesday that forecast that the global economy would do better in the year’s second half, boosting the oil demand outlook.
Brazil, China and India are exceeding expectations while the US and EU are recovering from last year, it added.
“The technicals may offer short-term relief, but fundamentally, the market lacks momentum,” Sachdeva said.
“Until clarity emerges on global growth, policy direction, and real demand recovery, especially from Asia, the crude complex looks set to drift sideways.” 


Bahrain, US firms sign $17bn in deals to deepen economic ties, news agency BNA says

Updated 15 min 3 sec ago
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Bahrain, US firms sign $17bn in deals to deepen economic ties, news agency BNA says

LONDON: Bahraini and US companies signed a series of agreements worth approximately $17 billion, aimed at strengthening economic ties and advancing cooperation across key sectors, Bahrain’s state news agency BNA reported on Wednesday.

The deals span sectors such as aviation, technology, industry, and investment.

Among the agreements, Cisco Systems will provide digital solutions for Bahrain’s government information and telecommunications infrastructure. Separately, plans were announced to establish an 800-km, or 497-mile, multi-fiber submarine cable linking Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq to global networks, according to BNA.

Bahraini financial institutions and private-sector firms also announced plans to invest $10.7 billion in the US, while sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat signed deals with several US companies to invest $2 billion in downstream aluminum projects, with a focus on job creation.

The signing ceremony took place during Bahraini Prime Minister and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa’s visit to Washington late on Tuesday.

He emphasized that expanding cooperation with the US could help create new economic opportunities through investment and collaboration.

In 2023, Bahrain and the US signed a security and economic agreement, and Bahrain continues to host the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet and the headquarters of the US Naval Forces Central Command.


Saudi Arabia raises $1.34bn through July sukuk issuance

Updated 15 July 2025
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Saudi Arabia raises $1.34bn through July sukuk issuance

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s National Debt Management Center raised SR5.02 billion ($1.34 billion) through its riyal-denominated sukuk issuance for July, marking a sharp 113.6 percent increase compared to the previous month.

In June, the Kingdom issued sukuk worth SR2.35 billion, while May and April saw issuances of SR4.08 billion and SR3.71 billion, respectively.

Sukuk are Shariah-compliant financial instruments that offer investors partial ownership in an issuer’s underlying assets, making them a popular alternative to conventional bonds.

According to NDMC, the July issuance was divided into four tranches. The first tranche, valued at SR776 million, will mature in 2029. The second, worth SR1.34 billion, is set to mature in 2032, followed by a third tranche of SR823 million due in 2036. The largest tranche, totaling SR2.08 billion, will mature in 2039.

Saudi Arabia’s debt market has witnessed robust growth in recent years, attracting strong investor interest in fixed-income instruments amid a global environment of rising interest rates.

In April, Kuwait Financial Center, also known as Markaz, reported that Saudi Arabia led the Gulf Cooperation Council in primary debt issuances during the first quarter of the year. The Kingdom raised $31.01 billion from 41 offerings, accounting for over 60 percent of total issuances across the region.

Credit rating agency S&P Global noted in April that Saudi Arabia’s expanding non-oil sector and steady sukuk issuance volumes are likely to support the growth of the global Islamic finance industry.

The agency forecasts global sukuk issuance to reach between $190 billion and $200 billion in 2025, with foreign currency-denominated offerings contributing up to $80 billion, assuming market conditions remain stable.

Echoing that outlook, a report by Kamco Invest published in December said Saudi Arabia is expected to account for the largest share of bond maturities in the GCC between 2025 and 2029, with $168 billion set to mature during the period.

Earlier this month, S&P Global reiterated its positive view, stating that the global sukuk market is on track to maintain its momentum in 2025, with foreign currency-denominated issuances projected to reach between $70 billion and $80 billion.


Saudi Arabia tops MENA VC rankings with $860m in H1: MAGNiTT 

Updated 15 July 2025
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Saudi Arabia tops MENA VC rankings with $860m in H1: MAGNiTT 

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia led venture capital activity in the Middle East and North Africa in early 2025, raising $860 million — a 116 percent annual jump — backed by sovereign support and foreign interest. 

In its latest report, regional venture platform MAGNiTT revealed that the Kingdom witnessed 114 deals in the first half of the year, marking a significant 31 percent rise compared to the same period in 2024. 

This comes on the back of a strong 2024 performance, when Saudi Arabia retained its position as the most funded MENA country for VC for the second consecutive year. Startups raised $750 million, with a 34 percent increase in deal funding rounds below $100 million – dubbed MEGA deals – reflecting growing early- and mid-stage capital formation, according to a report released earlier this year by MAGNiTT and SVC. 

In its latest report for the first half, MAGNiTT stated: “This growth was supported by continued sovereign capital activity, event-driven momentum from LEAP, and early-stage programs backed by new funds and accelerators.” 

Saudi Arabia ranked second among emerging venture markets in total VC funding, trailing only Singapore, which raised $1.28 billion across 120 deals in the first half. 

However, Singapore’s funding declined 37 percent year on year, while the number of deals dropped 31 percent. 

“The drop (in Singapore) signals a continued cooldown in late-stage deployment and foreign investor activity amid macro headwinds,” the report stated. 

Among emerging markets, Saudi Arabia was followed by the UAE, which raised $447 million in funding in the first six months of the year, a rise of 84 percent year on year. 

The UAE also matched Saudi Arabia in deal count, recording 114 deals, up 10 percent compared to the same period last year. This was driven by increased international participation, which reached its highest level in the Emirates since the first half of 2020. 

Elsewhere, Turkiye raised $226 million, followed by Vietnam at $216 million, Egypt at $185 million, and South Africa at $183 million. Nigeria raised $158 million, while Indonesia and Kenya secured $102 million and $71 million, respectively. 

The report further noted that fintech was the leading sector across all three EVM regions in the first half, accounting for 45 percent of VC funding in Southeast Asia, 38 percent in the Middle East, and 45 percent in Africa. 

“The bulk of this activity was concentrated in payment solutions and lending platforms, which emerged as the dominant fintech subsectors,” added the report. 

Meanwhile, mergers and acquisitions activity across emerging venture markets saw 55 transactions in the first half, marking a 31 percent increase compared to the same period last year. 


Closing Bell: Saudi main index closes in red at 11,095

Updated 15 July 2025
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Closing Bell: Saudi main index closes in red at 11,095

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul All Share Index slipped on Tuesday, as it shed 118.18 points, or 1.05 percent, to close at 11,095.41. 

The total trading turnover of the benchmark index was SR4.52 billion ($1.21 billion), with 46 of the listed stocks advancing and 204 declining. 

The Kingdom’s parallel market Nomu also shed 55.43 points to 27,301.46.

The MSCI Tadawul Index declined by 1.09 percent to close at 1,421.31. 

The best-performing stock on the main market was SHL Finance Co. The firm’s share price increased by 5.21 percent to SR22.62. 

The share price of SICO Saudi REIT Fund rose by 5.1 percent to SR4.33. 

Tourism Enterprise Co. also saw its stock price climb by 3.26 percent to SR0.95. 

Conversely, the share price of Alistithmar AREIC Diversified REIT Fund declined by 4.03 percent to SR9.05. 

On the announcements front, Saudi Co. for Hardware, also known as SACO, said that it signed an agreement valued at SR140.43 million to sell its warehouse in Al-Mashael district in Riyadh. 

In a Tadawul statement, SACO said that the proceeds from the sale will be used to repay existing bank loans and help support its future expansion plans.

The firm further said that the 42,937-sq.-meter warehouse was sold to 6th Iradat Al Imdad Co., a limited liability company. 

The firm added that there are no related parties involved in the deal. 

The share price of SACO dropped by 1.02 percent to SR29.14. 

The shareholders of Saudi Lime Industries Co. approved a recommendation to increase its capital by 5 percent through a one-for-20 bonus share distribution, by capitalizing SR11 million from the firm’s retained earnings account.

The stock price of Saudi Lime Industries Co., listed on the parallel market, advanced by 4.77 percent to SR12.97.