Cybersecurity investment across the Gulf will reach Dh120 billion by 2030, with AI and sovereign strategies driving a new era of regional resilience.
DUBAI: Cybersecurity across the Gulf is poised for exponential growth, with new research forecasting a doubling of spending from Dh60.6 billion in 2024 to over Dh120 billion by 2030. According to Grand View Research, the surge is driven by AI, sovereign cloud systems and national data infrastructure becoming central to economic transformation efforts in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The report, Cyber Resilience in the Gulf: Where Technology Meets Sovereign Risk, identifies AI-driven threat intelligence, zero-trust models, and policy-led frameworks as critical pillars of the region’s new digital doctrine. With the UAE’s Cybersecurity Strategy 2025–31 and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 embedding cyber protection into all major infrastructure projects, cybersecurity is no longer viewed as a back-end concern—but a front-line investment in economic stability.
Swayam Dash, Managing Director at Grand View Research, stated: “Cyber resilience has shifted from a technical goal to a sovereign necessity. In the Gulf, digital security now underpins everything from economic growth to public trust.”
The UAE’s AI cybersecurity market alone is projected to grow more than fourfold, from Dh4.4 billion to Dh19.7 billion by 2030—at a record 27.4% CAGR, the fastest in the region. Meanwhile, Saudi’s AI-based cyber revenue will jump from Dh4.59 billion to Dh16.47 billion, growing at 22.8% CAGR.
Notable milestones include the ADGM Cyber Risk Framework, which mandates continuity for financial institutions, and the Saudi Central Bank’s stress-testing regime, simulating large-scale cyber shocks. Cross-border CERT intelligence sharing is also creating a regional early-warning system.
Dash adds, “Technology can be imported—resilience must be built. The Gulf’s advantage is unified governance, enabling nations to adopt cybersecurity as part of a single sovereign framework.”
As digital infrastructure expands, cyber resilience is becoming a benchmark for fiscal credibility. With system uptime now a proxy for economic stability, the Gulf is charting a new course where networks never fail.
