News

Step Conference 2022 Celebrates Cutting-Edge Technologies

Step is celebrating its 10 year anniversary with the Step Conference 2022 edition back in-person.

Published

5 years ago

February 4, 2022

step conference 2022 celebrates cutting-edge technologies

Our increasingly digital lives are shaped by cutting-edge technologies that enable information to be exchanged faster and more easily than ever before. From February 23 to February 24, Step Conference 2022 will celebrate artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, fintech, Web3, cloud technology, healthcare technology, and other building blocks of the modern world.

10th Anniversary Of Step Conference

This year’s conference is extra special because it marks the 10th anniversary of the event, which started as a series of workshops and small gatherings in 2011.

Since its humble beginnings, Step Conference has grown to become a comprehensive conference ecosystem that brings top tech experts to Dubai to share their insights with large audiences, exchange expertise, and drive innovation.

Step Conference is organized by new media company Step. During the past decade, Step has hosted more than 200 events and programs, with participation from more than 2,000 startups from MENA and other regions.

Step’s investor meeting and mentorship programs have helped facilitate over 10,000 connections, many of which have resulted in fruitful partnerships.

Step Conference 2022 is happening alongside Expo 2020 in the heart of Dubai Internet City. “Our partnership with Dubai Internet City has been impactful in engaging and supporting entrepreneurs in the region” said Ray Dargham, CEO of Step.

What You Can Look Forward To At Step Conference 2022

The 10th iteration of Step Conference will be full of interesting events to attend. The topics they will explore include:

NFTs: Non-fungible tokens, which are cryptographic proofs of ownership stored on a blockchain, have profoundly transformed the art industry, and they continue to disrupt how assets (mainly digital but also physical) are owned. From Coinbase to Meta to Ubisoft, established companies are joining the NFT revolution and exploring a broad range of potential use cases.

Web3: Thanks to the decentralized infrastructure provided by Blockchain technology, the World Wide Web is now evolving to give its users the ability to actually own and control the data they generate, among other things. While still in its early stages, Web3 is likely to have just as profound impact on society as user-generated content enabled by Web 2.0 has had.

Metaverse: Virtual reality has matured to such an extent that it can now be used to overcome the limitations of remote working, provide more memorable and immersive education, deliver healthcare services to people in remote areas, and more. What is emerging is an interconnected network of virtual reality worlds, and this network is referred to as the metaverse.

Discussing these and other hot topics will be Elie Habib, the founder of the Middle East’s leading music streaming service Anghami; Michelle Arrazcaeta, head of Brand Strategy & Collaborations at Polaroid; Paul Misener, the Vice President of Global Innovation Policy and Communication at Amazon; Sidra Qasim, co-founder of Brooklyn-based shoe brand Atoms; and others.

“We hope to welcome international delegations to the conference, expanding the potential for partnerships and investment on a larger scale than ever before” said Ammar Al Malik, Managing Director of Dubai Internet City.

How To Attend Step Conference 2022

If you would like to attend Step Conference 2022 yourself, you can purchase tickets from the Step website. Early discounts are no longer available, but regular tickets can be purchased until February 13.

Tickets are divided into three main Tracks (Fintech, Future, and Digital) based on covered topics. The Fintech Track revolves around the latest in financial technology, blockchain, and digital currencies. The Future Track is all about automation, smart cities, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. The Digital Track covers everything from digital marketing to advertising technology.

You can also purchase a Master Pass to access all main tracks plus workshops, satellite events, entertainment venues, and more.

News

ESET Bets On Specialized Security AI At 0.5% The Training Cost

ESET says NeoCortex can estimate an attacker’s next move, with a kill switch and human oversight built in to keep it from going rogue.

Published

5 days ago

November 4, 2026

Dana Saadeh

eset bets on specialized security ai at 0.5% the training cost

A sign-in anomaly, a suspicious process launch and an unusual connection may look harmless alone. Together, they can describe an intrusion that is hard for security to teams to piece together.

To solve that problem, ESET announced ESET NeoCortex on November 4, 2026: a specialized foundational AI model for cybersecurity. It powers ESET LiveCortex, available within the ESET PROTECT Platform, which connects fragmented security signals and turns them into actionable incidents.

Filtering is the main selling point, with LiveCortex processing billions of raw telemetry events daily, and just 0.00111% of them contributing to incidents presented to customers. The aim is less alert fatigue and more analyst time spent on threats that matter.

NeoCortex is built on world-model architecture, learning how digital environments behave and how events relate. ESET says that lets it reconstruct missing incident context, recognize similar past cases and estimate an attacker’s likely next step – what the company calls “minus-one-day defense,” a chance to intervene before the next stage unfolds. ESET points to Black October, the week leading up to October 25, 2026, when critical security issues affecting PHP, Linux, GitLab and other key systems demanded rapid, prioritized responses, as the kind of moment where that context matters.

ESET’s internal research also suggests a specialized model like NeoCortex can be trained at up to 200 times lower cost than a large general reasoning model, while delivering more accurate, defense-focused results. The company credits optimized training, a focus on cybersecurity vocabulary, lower computing requirements and privately owned hardware.

Also Read: Dubai Says Its Deepfake Detector Needs Just 7 Seconds Of Video

“AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and cyberdefenses. With ESET NeoCortex, we are applying our AI investment to develop specialized foundational cybersecurity intelligence that remains under our control and strengthens, rather than replaces, human expertise,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

As part of the design, NeoCortex forms part of a layered architecture combining specialized models, deterministic controls, correlation logic, validation, auditability and expert human oversight. Safeguards include restricted sandboxes, read-only tools, continuous monitoring, defined usage and token limits, a kill switch and human oversight of critical response decisions. The model is also developed and self-hosted on ESET’s own infrastructure, which the company says reduces exposure to shifts among third-party AI providers, including commercial and geopolitical ones.