According to AWS’s official status dashboard update, two facilities in the UAE were directly struck by drones, while one facility in Bahrain sustained physical damage from a nearby drone strike.

The company stated: “These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.”

This marks one of the first publicly confirmed physical military attacks on a major hyperscale cloud provider’s infrastructure.

The incidents affected the AWS Middle East (UAE) Region (ME-CENTRAL-1) and the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region (ME-SOUTH-1), leading to outages and degraded performance for services including EC2, S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, and RDS.

AWS has described the recovery as prolonged and unpredictable due to ongoing regional instability.

Customers have been advised to activate disaster recovery plans and migrate workloads to other AWS regions where possible.

Impact on Businesses and Users

The attacks caused service interruptions for banks, delivery apps, government services, and enterprises across the Gulf that depend on these availability zones.

With data centres becoming strategic targets in modern conflicts, this incident highlights the physical vulnerabilities of cloud infrastructure, even for tech giants like Amazon.

AWS and local authorities have not reported casualties from the strikes.

For African businesses and developers heavily reliant on AWS; common for Nigerian fintechs, startups, and enterprises routing through global cloud providers, this serves as a reminder of geopolitical risks.

Experts recommend multi-region redundancy and regular failover testing to avoid similar disruptions.

Amazon has not released detailed images or extent of damage, citing security reasons.

Recovery efforts were reported as making progress in some areas, but full restoration timelines remain unclear.

Two availability zones in the UAE lost power, while Bahrain experienced connectivity issues. AWS said recovery for both regions could take “many hours,” advising customers to rely on services in other regions while it works to restore power and connectivity.

The UAE incident occurred after sparks and fire were triggered at one of the cloud provider’s zones, prompting an immediate shutdown of power in the affected areas. 

AWS did not confirm whether the outages were related to recent Iranian retaliatory strikes on neighbouring Gulf states, including the UAE and Bahrain, in response to U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.

The outages coincided with other challenges across regions, as Iranian strikes in the Gulf damaged infrastructure, including Dubai airport and the Burj Al Arab hotel, prompting questions about the possible link to AWS disruptions.

Separately, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) reported technical issues affecting its platforms and mobile app users on Monday. 

While the bank did not confirm a direct link to AWS, the timing points to possible ripple effects from the data centre outages.

The investment will fund the expansion of advanced data centres, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and talent development programmes across the country.

According to Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, the company’s focus is to meet the UAE’s surging demand for AI technology. “The biggest share of (the investment), by far, both looking back and looking forward, is the expansion of AI data centres across the UAE,” Smith told Reuters during the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi. 

He added, “From our perspective, it’s an investment that is critical to meet the demand here for the use of AI.”

The new funding comes after Microsoft’s $1.5 billion equity investment in G42, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign AI company, last year, a deal that also gave the U.S. firm a board seat. 

G42 has faced some issues in Washington over previous ties with China, but Smith noted that the company had made “enormous progress” in aligning with U.S. legal and compliance standards.

Part of the funding will go towards providing Microsoft’s data centres with some of the most powerful chips available. Licences approved by both the Biden and Trump administrations now allow the company to export thousands of Nvidia GPUs to the UAE. 

Smith revealed that Microsoft currently holds the equivalent of 21,500 Nvidia A100 GPUs in the country, combining models such as A100, H100, and H200. More recently, approvals have been granted for an additional 60,400 A100-equivalent GB300 chips, which are expected to arrive within months.

Between 2023 and the end of this year, Microsoft will have spent $7.3 billion in the UAE. A further $7.9 billion is scheduled for deployment between 2026 and 2029, covering cloud expansion, data centre development, and local operating costs. 

None of this figure includes Microsoft’s involvement in Stargate UAE, a massive data hub announced earlier this year during U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gulf visit.

Smith, in a detailed post on Microsoft’s website, said the company’s approach in the UAE extends beyond technology. It includes driving local talent, building trust, and enhancing economic collaboration between the U.S. and the UAE. 

Microsoft’s workforce in the Emirates now includes nearly 1,000 employees of 40 nationalities, supported by a partner ecosystem of over 1,400 firms employing about 45,000 professionals nationwide.

The company recently established a Global Engineering Development Centre in Abu Dhabi and expanded its AI for Good Lab, focusing on research that benefits communities across Africa and the Middle East. Efforts include training language models for low-resource African languages and skilling one million people in the UAE by 2027.

In February, Microsoft and G42, alongside the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, founded the Responsible AI Future Foundation (RAIFF) in Abu Dhabi to promote ethical AI standards across the Global South. 

The foundation’s work complements an Intergovernmental Assurance Agreement (IGAA), a framework developed with U.S. and UAE input to ensure compliance with American export, cybersecurity, and data protection laws.

“Talent is the engine of AI leadership,” Smith wrote. “Attracting, nurturing, and building AI talent and know-how is essential to the UAE turning its vision of becoming a global leader into a reality.”

With this investment in the UAE, Microsoft is linking American innovation with Emirati ambition through what Smith described as “technology, talent, and trust.”

Today, UAE-based venture builder Disrupt.com announces a $100M commitment to build and back AI-first technology ventures globally.

Founded by Aaqib Gadit, Uzair Gadit, and Umair Gadit – three university friends who grew up in the same household – Disrupt.com represents the founders’ reinvestment of capital following their successful 2022 exit of cloud hosting platform Cloudways to US-listed Digital Ocean Holdings. 

The $350M acquisition marked the largest exit in Pakistan’s technology sector to date, with the founders now channeling their entrepreneurial expertise and capital back into the ecosystem through a unique venture building approach from their UAE headquarters.

Having already deployed over $40M across their portfolio – including in four growth-stage companies built from idea stage, seven investments in early-stage companies, and an exit valued at $350 million – this new $100M commitment represents a significant expansion of their venture building activities. 

With a dedicated team of 650+ professionals, Disrupt.com provides not just capital but also the technical and operational expertise startups need to scale.

“Now is the time to be doubling down on our experience, financial investment and commitment required to help build the next wave of startups that will shape the future of the world as we know it. With Web 3.0 in its infancy and AI storming into our lives, the opportunity to problem solve and create businesses that will fit the needs of how people live and work is up for the taking. Our region can not only keep up, but lead the way. We are excited to see where this journey will take us,” said founding partner Aaqib Gadit. 

Unlike traditional venture capital firms, Disrupt.com employs a three-pronged approach to creating value: building their own startups from scratch, co-building ventures alongside external founders, and making strategic investments in early-stage startups and VC funds. 

Through their unique ‘CoBuild’ model, they function as fractional co-founders, providing dedicated engineering, go-to-market, and operations teams to drive early adoption in a capital-efficient way.

The firm’s $100M commitment targets five strategic sectors: artificial intelligence as a cross-cutting theme, plus cybersecurity, Web3.0, automotive technology, and retail innovation.

Disrupt.com primarily targets pre-seed to Series A stage startups that demonstrate strong organic growth potential and clear paths to profitability, rather than pursuing growth at all costs.

The announcement comes as regional funding has declined sharply, with MENA venture capital investment down 29% to just under $2B in 2024, according to Magnitt.

Saudi startups saw a 44% funding drop to $750M, while UAE funding decreased 8% to $613M, creating a challenging environment for early-stage ventures.

Disrupt.com’s current portfolio showcases their model’s effectiveness, including ZigChain, a Web3.0 platform that has scaled to 500,000+ users and hundreds of millions in managed assets; PureSquare, a cybersecurity venture; and UAE-homegrown fitness apparel brand Squatwolf. 

The firm has already deployed capital as a strategic investor in several AI-focused startups including organizational transformation platform Agentnoon and climate action scaling tool Ahya.

Bartolome R. Bordallo, Co-Founder & CEO of ZigChain, highlighted the venture builder’s distinctive approach:

“Some investors write checks. Disrupt.com builds with you. They’ve helped us scale from a few early adopters to managing hundreds of millions in assets and launching our own blockchain.”

Anam Khalid and Wajdan Gul, co-founders of UAE-based fitness apparel brand Squatwolf, emphasize the founder-first approach:

“With Disrupt, you get founder-friendly partners because they’re founders themselves. They understand our challenges and opportunities in a way traditional investors simply cannot.”

Looking ahead, Disrupt.com will direct its $100M commitment toward ventures with strong product-market fit, well-researched idea-market alignment, and robust unit economics pointing toward profitability.

The Series A round, which takes the startup’s total funding above $30 million, was led by Altos Ventures, trusting Ziina’s business model and ability to scale, especially in a global funding slowdown.

Other investors included Activant Capital, Avenir Growth, Fintech Collective, FJ Labs, Jabbar Internet Group, Middle East Venture Partners, and Y Combinator. 

Since its inception in 2020, Ziina has evolved from a peer-to-peer payment app into a comprehensive financial platform focused on the needs of both individuals and businesses. 

Initially gaining traction with its consumer-focused app, the startup has now grown its user base to 50,000 active customers, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 

This growth has been largely driven by the company’s focus on addressing the unique financial needs of SMEs in the UAE, a segment that accounts for over 94% of all companies in the country and contributes approximately 60% to the nation’s GDP.

Ziina’s latest funding round follows its move towards serving the SME market. The company’s platform, which now includes payment gateways, point-of-sale solutions, and integrations with major e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify, has enabled businesses to simplify their payment processes and track financial transactions more efficiently. 

With SMEs in the UAE increasingly adopting digital payments — 77% as of 2023 — Ziina is capitalising on this trend.

The company’s CEO, Faisal Toukan, spoke on the factors that made Ziina attractive to investors. These include the strong growth of the SME sector in the UAE, the company’s product-led expansion strategy, and its recently acquired central bank license. 

This license, a stored value facility (SVF) permit from the Central Bank of the UAE, allows Ziina to offer a wider range of financial services, excluding lending, and to generate revenue from customer deposits on the platform.

Ziina’s product development has been driven by the need to simplify financial management for businesses. The platform offers transparency in pricing, with no hidden fees and straightforward transaction costs. 

Again, the user-friendly dashboard allows businesses to easily monitor and reconcile payments, both online and offline. 

The startup’s innovative approach has led to rapid adoption, with Ziina processing approximately 1,050 dirhams every 60 seconds and projected to handle 1.1 billion dirhams in annualised transaction volume by the end of the year.

Ziina plans to continue scaling its operations and expanding its product offerings. The company is on track to introduce ZiiCard, an expense management tool, further enhancing its appeal to SMEs. 

With the growth of the fintech industry in the Middle East, Ziina aims to reach 200,000 active business users within the next four years.

Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation (OGRC) supports a stronger, louder voice from Africa, and through its partners, has developed key programmes focussed on addressing and mitigating climate change. 

Global efforts to limit carbon emissions are falling short, developed countries have not coughed up the $100 billion promised to help developing countries meet targets, and the EU is set to impose carbon taxes that will hamstring Africa’s development ambitions.

Exactly how far countries have fallen short in meeting global climate goals and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions will be revealed by the first Global Stocktake due to be presented to delegates at COP28 in Dubai in early December.

In spite of these headwinds, OGRC research on ecosystem conservation, financing, carbon credits and wildlife economies will be highlighted at COP28 to show how African countries can put the brake on climate change while keeping the economy thriving.

As the world continues to heat up at an unprecedented rate, scientists grapple with trying to understand the global impact and the historical lack of decisive action. Climate has shifted temperatures and weather patterns, and although some of these changes are natural the dramatic fluctuations in temperatures and sporadic rainfall patterns are of great concern.

Scientists have persistently highlighted human activities, particularly the unbridled burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas since the industrial revolution, as the primary drivers behind these observed changes.

“Freak weather events” – severe fires, changes in the rainfall patterns in tropical cyclones, heatwaves and flooding – have led to biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and mass extinctions.

These changes have damaged commercial agriculture, subsistence farming and household food security.

There is however hope. Government, business and industry are recognising that robust scientific data and recommendations from scientists are the solid base on which meaningful decisions are made.

At COP28, UAE, NGOs, politicians, scientists, youth, business, investors, civil society and frontline communities will engage in critical discussions and decision-making about global climate change.

The key themes to be addressed will include transforming climate finance by delivering on old promises, putting nature, people, lives, and livelihoods at the heart of climate action and fast-tracking the energy transition to slash emissions before 2030.

The aim is to limit the global temperature rise to below 2°C, preferably below 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels. However, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report suggests that even with our best possible mitigation efforts, the chances of us limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees will not be achieved.

The Global Stocktake (GST) will provide a comprehensive assessment of progress made by countries to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to the impacts of climate change, and provide support to developing nations in these endeavours.

Unfortunately, the developed world has fallen short of fulfilling its financial commitments of $100 billion in annual funding to assist developing countries reduce their emissions and manage the impacts of climate change.

The failure to fulfil financial commitments has further derailed the world in the ambition to reduce its emissions by 43% by 2030.

The financial commitment required to reach these reductions far outweighs what already heavily indebted developing countries require – yet undershoot the financial capacity the combined developed countries have the capacity to provide.

Yet, instead of meeting their obligations, the European Union has introduced the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, a policy that imposes a carbon cost on certain imports based on the carbon emissions associated with the production of those goods.

The implications for African exports to the EU are substantial, potentially hindering the continent’s development ambitions and causing an annual GDP loss of around $31 billion.

The justification for the policy is to level the playing field for industries within the EU that are subject to strict emissions reduction requirements.

We have to question how this reasoning coming from nations that have benefited from fossil fuel use for over 250 years is justifiable, when they are yet to fulfil their commitments to ensure that we have the capacity to explore alternative greener technologies and transition from coal heavy industries to renewable energy sources.

In this context, it becomes evident that for any meaningful change to occur, Africa, where feasible, must assume a leadership role in shaping policies that not only articulate our needs but also position us advantageously in the global fight against climate change.

Recognising that climate change is a collective responsibility, Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation (OGRC) has committed to contributing to the global effort to combat the adverse effects of climate change. We view COP 28 as an invaluable platform to showcase the innovations and climate research done by our partners.

Our Future Ecosystems for Africa (FEFA) programme, in collaboration with AGNES (African Group of Negotiators Expert Support) and OGRC, has recognised the need to mobilise African climate science and evidence on the continent, to feed into important discussions and provide an integrated, technical summary of the potential synergies and trade-offs between climate actions and sustainable development.

This work focuses on developing viable and pragmatic solutions to contemporary climate-related challenges, derived in collaboration with numerous other research partners, with the overarching goal of enhancing decision-making processes in relation to climate change and development on the African continent.

In line with COP28’s core theme of “investing in climate solutions by committing and investments in nature-positive projects, policies and practices, OGRC has partnered with the African Wildlife Economy Institute (AWEI) to address these aspects.

Conserving Africa’s biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides should be central to climate change responses, given the high dependence of people on these services.

The key finding of the Africa chapter of the last IPCC report was that reduced species representation in protected areas is predicted due to climate-induced range shifts, with range shifts impeded by increasing land transformation and fencing.

African countries urgently need complementary conservation strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change on biodiversity.

Wildlife economies present one such strategy, which involves increasing the extent of conserved ecosystems and their connectivity, while also contributing to livelihoods and food security through sustainable wildlife use, including hunting, harvesting, meat, and tourism.

Our research also shows that wildlife economies have more diverse revenue streams than conventional agriculture, which builds their resilience to disturbance and change.

Wildlife economies can simultaneously contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation in Africa through sequestering carbon while conserving biodiversity and promoting resilient livelihoods.

Another OGRC-supported programme, the African Leadership Universities (ALU), School of Wildlife Conservation, states “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”.

The key concept here is to gather consistent, comparable data on the impacts of climate change on wildlife economies across Africa.

In Africa, climate action alone is unlikely to succeed, but if combined with development in a way that wildlife is seen as a key strategic asset, it will encourage investment and finance in conservation.

OGRC has further invested in Rewild Capital, a carbon credits company. Experts from Rewild Capital use their knowledge of international carbon market dynamics and integration into global networks to reduce transaction information asymmetry and secure the best prices and terms for landowners across the continent.

Their carbon and rangeland scientists deal with the complexity of meeting international carbon standards requirements. From start to finish they take care of soil carbon measurements and analysis.

These measures ensure that Africa can lead in the mitigation of climate change, while securing livelihoods in non-forested African ecosystems.

Some of the major messages that will emerge from COP28 are on workstreams that will attract climate investment and finance, as well as assessing mitigation and adaptation response measures.

Research tells us that finance gaps across Africa are huge and that new, additional money is needed.

There is a strong feeling that new, multinational, scaled finances for long-term goals are required. So, there will be focus on securing new financial pledges, while encouraging fulfilment of old promises.

There will be a focus on adopting high level targets with clear delivery indicators, including the enhancement of adaptive capacity, with a hope of doubling finance. Negotiators will also be pushing for a clear roadmap to achieve these outcomes.

There will be a focus on developing countries and ensuring that all are supported through delivering on promises made at COP27, with a focus on compensation and provision for historical loss and damage.

*Duncan MacFadyen is head of research, and Rendani Nenguda research associate at, Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation.

Reverse engineering implies detailed examination of a software product or web application to detect vulnerabilities or hidden features. It covers a broad range of areas, including decompiling and disassembling executable files and libraries, and analysis of system data.

According to the external research, the vast majority of cyber professionals state that the cybersecurity skills shortage and skills gap have not improved over the past few years and even got worse. To help InfoSec practitioners enhance their skills, Kaspersky has been continuously running expert trainings both online and offline, organising bootcamps and workshops. 

In June 2023, Kaspersky conducted the Codebreakers cybersecurity competition with over 550 participants from 35 countries¹ including France, Germany, USA, Brazil, China, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, South Africa, and others.

It was designed to test different hard skills of InfoSec professionals in a limited timeframe and reveal strengths and weaknesses in their expertise. 

Experts from Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) set a number of cybersecurity challenges in three different tracks: Threat Hunting with Yara², Reverse Engineering, and Incident Response. Participants were given such tasks as analуsing an attack scenario on a corporate network and collecting evidence; writing Yara rules for detecting malware; reverse engineering a program and uncovering its secrets by cracking the APK obfuscator; training a machine learning model.

Only 18 participants were able to solve all the tasks. The best results were shown by InfoSec practitioners from the Czech Republic and South Korea.

According to the competition results, the tasks that were most complicated for the participants were related to reverse engineering as they required specific knowledge of system programming, features of x86 and ARM architecture and practical skills in working with disassemblers (e.g., IDA Pro, Ghidra) and debuggers (e.g., x64dbg/WinDBG/OllyDbg).

The tasks that were solved fastest were associated with Yara, one of the most familiar and popular tools among those that analyse malicious code. These tasks were the easiest to perform. 

“We tried to make the CTF tasks as close as possible to the real-world challenges InfoSec professionals face every day. Participants were required to apply their knowledge in a variety of situations, ranging from beginner-friendly to expert level, testing their readiness to deal with advanced cyber threats in future scenarios. Congratulations to the finalists who managed to solve all challenges and I am confident they will fully benefit from the free training offered by Kaspersky,”

says Dan Demeter, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky.

“We are trying to keep up with the times and contribute to better professional background of InfoSec practitioners. Our Expert Training portfolio provides courses covering different cybersecurity topics, from basic knowledge in reverse engineering and writing Yara rules to advanced methods of finding threats and malware analysis. We believe that our cybersecurity competition will help participants to reveal and work on the areas that need improvements to be able to cope with even the most complex threats in the future,”

comments Yuliya Dashchenko, Team Lead of Expert Trainings at Kaspersky.

The winner of Codebreakers received free access to one of Kaspersky’s Expert Trainings. Others were given a big discount for training programs.

“I enjoyed that the competition was well balanced and contained good challenges. I loved the scoring system as well and was happy to play with Klara,”

says one of the participants under the nickname Termopan.