The appointment, announced on Tuesday in Dubai, will see ElOuazzani lead the company’s regional growth strategy, including revenue, partnerships and market expansion.

She will also oversee efforts to strengthen Censys’ presence with governments and enterprises across the region.

Sarah Ashburn, chief revenue officer at Censys, said:

“We are delighted to welcome Meriam ElOuazzani as Vice President for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. This deepens our investment in a region where Censys has established strong momentum and is strategically positioned for accelerated growth. 

“Meriam’s proven track record of scaling cybersecurity markets across META, combined with her deep regional insight, makes her the right leader to grow our market presence and meet rising demand for trusted internet intelligence.”

ElOuazzani has more than 20 years of experience in cybersecurity and enterprise technology. She previously served as Senior Regional Director at SentinelOne, where she built the company’s regional go-to-market operations.

Before that, she held several leadership roles at VMware across the Middle East and North Africa. She also led regional product sales for mobility in the Middle East at Cisco Systems.

In her new role, she will focus on building strategic partnerships. These include government bodies, enterprise customers, managed security service providers and hyperscale cloud partners.

She will work with Rajaee Al-Dalgamouni, appointed Regional Sales Director for META, and Ahmed Ehlayel, named Solutions Engineering, META.

ElOuazzani said:

“The META region is at an inflection point in cybersecurity maturity. Across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, governments and commercial organisations are moving beyond perimeter defence and demanding real-time threat detection and operational visibility into their digital footprint. 

“Over the past two decades in this region, I’ve witnessed firsthand how the right intelligence transforms the security operations entirely. 

“Censys’s internet intelligence platform equips security teams with authoritative, real-time insight into exposure and adversary activity, replacing assumptions with actionable confidence. My mission is to establish Censys as a trusted partner across META, enabling the shift from reactive defence to proactive intelligence.”

Censys provides internet intelligence tools that help organisations identify exposed assets, monitor changes and detect threats. The platform, which continuously maps internet-facing systems and infrastructure, is used by governments, large companies and security providers.

The company says it scans all 65,535 internet ports and supports more than 26 industrial protocols, including Modbus, DNP3, Siemens S7 and BACnet. It also provides historical data on internet-connected assets to help track long-term exposure.

Censys has partnered in the Middle East with Rilian Technologies to deliver its capabilities to sovereign and critical infrastructure organisations. With this appointment, the company is increasing its focus on the region and expanding its local leadership team.

With every new application, endpoint and connection creating another potential entry point for attackers, organisations must understand their full environment to defend it effectively.

This is the foundation of attack surface management (ASM), a visibility-driven approach that helps security teams identify, assess and mitigate risk across the entire digital ecosystem – from public-facing IPs to internal applications, services and network infrastructure.

Without this visibility into your environment, it’s impossible to see where vulnerabilities exist or how attackers might exploit them.

ASM is able to provide continuous insight, helping teams recognise exposure, detect anomalies and respond faster to potential threats.

A guide to effective ASM deployment

An effective Attack Surface Management strategy involves several key steps. The first is asset identification, which involves mapping all digital assets, including devices, cloud workloads and services, to understand what’s actually connected to the environment.

This is crucial for uncovering hidden or forgotten assets that could become weak points.

Next is traffic monitoring. This is the continuous monitoring of network traffic, which provides visibility into communication patterns and helps detect anomalies that may indicate malicious activity.

Then comes risk assessment. By evaluating vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and exposures, organisations can prioritise remediation efforts based on potential impact.

This is followed by customised visualisation, where ASM dashboards and analytics are tailored to specific organisational needs, enabling faster, more informed decision-making.

The final phase is real-time event detection. Here, analytics that detect suspicious or unusual behaviour in real time are implemented to help ensure timely response and mitigation.

Together, these steps establish a proactive framework for understanding and managing the attack surface, rather than reacting after a breach occurs.

Internal versus external ASM: What’s the difference?

A complete ASM approach looks both outward and inward. External ASM focuses on internet-facing assets such as websites, cloud applications and third-party integrations – the points where an organisation connects to the outside world. Monitoring these helps detect external threats, such as scanning or attempted exploitation from unknown sources.

Internal ASM, by contrast, provides visibility into internal network assets and communications. This allows organisations to uncover misconfigurations, unpatched systems, or rogue devices that could be exploited from within. Internal visibility also supports stronger traffic policies, which can act as early warning tripwires for insider threats or lateral movement attempts.

By combining internal and external perspectives, organisations can achieve a truly holistic view of their security posture; one that detects both inbound threats and internal weaknesses before they become incidents.

Building resilience through visibility

Ultimately, effective Attack Surface Management is centred around awareness: knowing what you have, how it behaves and where it’s exposed.

Visibility enables resilience, allowing security teams to detect and respond to threats before they disrupt operations.

At NETSCOUT, we believe that visibility is the cornerstone of cybersecurity. Our solutions empower organisations to see their digital environments clearly, act decisively and safeguard their operations in an ever-changing threat landscape. In a world where the attack surface never stops expanding, clarity is the most powerful defence.