On the sidelines of CAISEC 2025, The Egyptian Gazette newspaper sat down with Khaled Fawzy, Senior Country Manager for Egypt, Libya, and Sudan at Fortinet, to discuss the company’s latest innovations, the evolving cyber threat landscape, and how Egypt is strengthening its digital defenses
- What’s new on Fortinet’s agenda during the CAISEC 2025 event?
We’re very excited to be participating at CAISEC 2025 for the third year as a Security Sponsor. It’s a key event for us in the region and offers a great platform to connect with industry leaders, customers, and partners about the latest in cybersecurity.
This year we’ll be showcasing Fortinet’s latest innovations, particularly in the areas of AI-powered security, Zero Trust, and advanced threat protection. Our presence will span both the exhibition area – where we’ll be welcoming visitors to explore our solutions and discuss their challenges – and the conference panels, where our experts will be sharing insights and thought leadership on current trends and technologies shaping the future of the industry. Of note, Ricardo Ferreira, one of our Field CISO’s (Chief Information Security Officer), will be joining us to speak about global cybersecurity trends and updates. We know that attendees will benefit greatly from his perspective.
CAISEC has always been a significant event for us, not just to demonstrate our leadership in cybersecurity, but to engage in meaningful conversations with the cybersecurity and tech communities. We’re looking forward to another strong and successful edition this year.
- From your perspective, who are the primary victims of cyber extortion that has become increasingly prominent recently, and who bears its cost – the state of society?
In short, both. Cybersecurity is a necessity for the sustainability of all society.
From a business perspective, there are considerable benefits to having a robust cybersecurity strategy in place, particularly when it comes to ensuring the sustainability and longevity of a company. But the links between cybersecurity and sustainability go much deeper. Cybersecurity is a necessary condition to ensure a safe and sustainable future for everyone.
Today, nearly every operation in our society and economy now depends on digital infrastructures, including energy, water systems, transportation, shipping, agriculture, telecommunications, healthcare, food, banking and finance, government, shopping, entertainment, and emergency services across public and private sectors. When a cyberattack targets these critical infrastructures, it can also significantly and severely impact national security, the economy, individual safety and privacy, and business stability and continuity.
Without cybersecurity, the sustainability of our modern, digitalized society is at risk, whether for individuals, communities, businesses, nations, and even the global economy.
- What are the primary drivers and underlying motivations behind cybercrime activities?
The primary drivers and motivations behind cybercrime are multifaceted, but financial gain and extortion is a dominant factor. For instance, cybercriminals will often use ransomware to extort victims into paying to regain access to their data or systems.
Stealing sensitive information like credit card details or personal data to commit financial crimes is also a huge driver for cybercriminals, and one of the most common attack methods. In our 2025 Global Threat Landscape Report, we found that in 2024 cybercriminals shared over 100 billion compromised records on underground forums, a 42% year-over-year spike, driven largely by the rise of “combo lists” containing stolen usernames, passwords, and email addresses. More than half of darknet posts involved leaked databases, enabling attackers to automate credential-stuffing attacks at scale. This is fuelling a surge in account takeovers, financial fraud, and corporate espionage.
Other attackers could have political and ideological motivations, seeking for example to influence elections by promoting political agendas or causing social unrest. Others merely seek to cause damage or disruption to systems and networks, either to result in reputational harm to an organisation or, in the worst cases, to human life.
- Despite the government’s cybersecurity efforts, some international reports rank Egypt among the countries most frequently targeted by cyber-attacks. How do you interpret this ranking?
The good news is that Egypt has already started to take important steps with national cybersecurity initiatives, sector-specific regulations, and increasing investment in cyber capabilities and talent. We are also seeing the shift from reactive to proactive cybersecurity strategies. Organizations are starting to embed security by design, investing in local talent and leveraging global best practices.
We’re also witnessing greater collaboration between public and private sectors, and a stronger focus on building resilient digital ecosystems. As a cybersecurity leader, we see huge potential in the Egyptian market and we are deeply committed to supporting this growth through innovation, knowledge-sharing, and strategic partnerships.
