News

Riyadh’s Black Hat MEA Exhibition Will Be The Biggest Yet

The event is now 60% larger and will feature a new Black Hat Campus, Deep Dive Stage, Investor Program, CyberSeed Startup Competition, and more.

Published

3 years ago

October 24, 2023

Nour Nasir

Black Hat MEA

Black Hat Middle East and Africa (MEA), is the cybersecurity industry’s fastest-growing cybersecurity expo, and will soon open its doors in a three-day event at the Riyadh Front Exhibition & Convention Center, November 14-16.

Black Hat MEA 2023 is the world’s largest cyber security event, with 40,000 attendees. The expo will feature 300 exhibitors and 100 speakers, all connected by the “Infosec on the Edge” theme. The conference has attracted many industry heavy-hitters, including Cisco, Huawei, Ali Baba Cloud, Palo Alto, Kaspersky, and Zscaler, whose Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer Sam Curry explained the importance of the event:

“The rapid pace of innovation among attackers demands innovation and application of new approaches to cybersecurity like ZeroTrust and applied Artificial Intelligence. That starts with a cultural nexus like Black Hat MEA in Riyadh, where we bring together the global cyber community and open the doors to the next generation because, in cyber, diversity and inclusion aren’t just the right thing to do; they are a competitive advantage and the key to the future of the digital world”.

black hat middle east and africa 2023

Highlights for 2023 include a Black Hat Campus and Deep Dive Stage, where cyber experts explore prevailing cybersecurity threats, and an Investor Program, where 80 potential backers will hunt for promising startups to fund.

Meanwhile, developers will showcase open-source tools and products in a section of the center called The Arsenal. Finally, an ethical hacking Capture The Flag tournament will take place in the Activities Zone, with 1,000 participants in 250 teams using their forensic, crypto, and reverse engineering skills to grab a portion of the USD 187,000 prize fund.

Also Read: The Largest Data Breaches In The Middle East

As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated, public and private companies in the MEA region and beyond are coming together to search for meaningful technologies and solutions to combat them. Black Hat MEA will act as a key conduit and meeting place for world-renowned experts to share ideas and develop defensive measures.

Exhibitor and attendee registrations for the Black Hat MEA event are open now at BlackHatMEA.com.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

Also Read: DJI Teases Dual-Camera Osmo Pocket 4P For 2026 Launch

Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.