By Diego Arrabal, Vice President, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa, Check Point Software Technologies
Cyber Resilience – Sustainability in the UAE and Saudi isn’t a slogan anymore. It’s in the plumbing of daily life: smart buildings that optimise cooling, ports that run on analytics, utilities that rely on connected control systems, hospitals that can’t afford downtime, and data centres that sit at the centre of everything from fintech to government services.
That’s the part we celebrate — and we should.
The harder part is this: the more connected and automated these systems become, the more exposed they are. Sustainability gains can disappear quickly when a cyber incident hits the infrastructure that keeps energy, water, transport and public services running.
A ransomware attack doesn’t just lock up files. It creates operational chaos — delays, workarounds, emergency fixes, wasted resources — all of which carry real environmental and social costs. In that sense, cyber incidents directly undermine sustainability, even if they don’t look like environmental issues at first glance.
This is why cyber security can’t sit in a separate conversation anymore. If sustainability is about resilience and continuity, then cyber resilience belongs inside the sustainability strategy, not on a different slide deck.
Security and sustainability are already converging
Check Point Software doesn’t position sustainability and security as parallel tracks. Its messaging ties them together: a “secure, sustainable digital future,” where cyber protection acts as the foundation for trust and responsible digital transformation.
That framing matters, because it reflects how the region is building: digitisation first, optimisation second, scale always. In that environment, security failures become sustainability failures.
And the threat volume is not hypothetical. In its ESG report, Check Point points to the scale of what modern defence has to handle — including “over 10 million cyberattacks prevented daily” and “more than 3.9 billion threats blocked annually” across organisations worldwide.
You don’t need to be in government or energy to feel the impact. If you run any system that people depend on — payments, logistics, healthcare, education, utilities, aviation — downtime is no longer a business inconvenience. It becomes a community problem.
The green transition is increasing exposure
Sustainability depends on connected systems: sensors, smart meters, building management platforms, analytics, and automation. Efficiency improves, but the number of entry points grows.
Buildings alone account for a significant share of global energy use. The International Energy Agency estimates that building operations represent around 30% of global final energy consumption and more than a quarter of energy-related emissions.
In the Gulf, cooling is a major part of that equation. When cyber incidents disrupt systems that manage cooling, access control, or ventilation, the impact goes beyond IT. It affects energy consumption, safety, and service continuity — especially during peak heat.
Security has an energy footprint too
There’s another point that deserves honesty: cyber security consumes power too.
If organisations keep stacking security tools without thinking about efficiency, they can inflate the energy footprint of their digital operations while still not reducing risk. This is why how security is designed and deployed matters as much as what is put in place.
Check Point’s ESG positioning highlights two practical moves that are relevant here:
- 100% renewable energy usage at its global headquarters
- A focus on more power-efficient security appliances, aimed at helping organisations reduce power consumption while improving protection
That second point is where the market needs to head. Security that performs better while demanding less energy isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the direction digital infrastructure needs to move if it’s going to be responsible at scale.
AI-driven automation also plays a role. Capabilities such as Check Point Infinity ThreatCloud AI and Infinity AI Copilot are designed to reduce resource-intensive manual tasks, helping minimise energy use across security operations centres and data environments.
On the environmental side, Check Point also communicates a longer-term ambition around carbon neutrality by 2040. Targets alone don’t prove progress, but they do signal intent — and intent becomes meaningful when it shows up in operational decisions and product design.
Sustainability isn’t only about carbon — it’s also about capability
Most cyber incidents succeed because someone didn’t have the skills, the time or the governance to keep defences current. That’s a people issue, and people issues are sustainability issues.
Check Point highlights progress toward a goal of training one million people in cyber security by 2028, explicitly linking it to the global talent shortage.
In a region moving fast on AI, cloud, and smart services, this matters. Technology ambitions rise or fall on human capability — not just budgets.
ESG doesn’t stop at the organisation
Sustainability is rarely “in-house only.” Hardware, manufacturing, logistics, and disposal are part of the footprint — and part of the risk.
On the supply chain side, Check Point publishes policies and expectations that reference recognised standards such as ISO 14001 (environmental management) in manufacturing environments, along with other compliance and sustainability-related requirements.
Its supplier and business partner code also sets expectations around environmental protection, compliance, and audit rights — with sustainability, ethics, and security sitting in the same framework.
That’s the direction ESG is heading globally: value chain responsibility, not just internal reporting.
Governance is the part that makes it stick
When ESG is treated as a reporting exercise, it stays polite. When it’s treated as risk management, it gets serious.
Check Point’s public filings point to ESG oversight through a board-level committee (Nominating, Sustainability and Corporate Governance) and day-to-day leadership by an ESG manager.
That’s the kind of structure organisations in the region should mirror: clear ownership, measurable outcomes, and accountability that survives leadership changes.
The takeaway for UAE and Saudi leaders
If you’re a CIO, CISO, COO or sustainability lead, here’s the practical shift:
stop treating cyber resilience as a technical line item and start treating it as part of sustainable operations.
The future you’re building — smarter cities, smarter healthcare, smarter transport, smarter industry — only stays sustainable when it stays trustworthy.
Security is no longer the “IT department’s job.” It’s become a foundational element of protecting energy efficiency, service continuity, public confidence and national competitiveness.
That’s not fear-mongering. It’s the reality of how sustainability is being delivered in 2026: through systems that must keep working — safely — even when they’re under pressure.
