Cohesity and ZainTECH Forge AI-Powered Cyber Resilience Partnership Across the Middle East
In a move that could reshape the cyber‑security landscape of the Gulf, ZainTECH – the digital solutions arm of Kuwait‑based telecom group Zain – has joined forces with U.S. data‑security firm Cohesity. The alliance, formalised through Cohesity’s Aspire Partner Programme, will bring an AI‑powered Backup‑as‑a‑Service (BaaS) offering to enterprise customers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.
Cohesity, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is known for its AI‑driven data protection and recovery solutions. Its platform delivers core security functions such as immutable backup, ransomware protection, anomaly detection, cyber vaulting and air‑gapped recovery through its FortKnox technology. FortKnox creates a self‑managed, air‑gapped vault that stores an immutable copy of data outside the primary backup environment, addressing concerns about data residency and regulatory compliance that are increasingly important to organisations in the region.
Under the partnership, ZainTECH will package these capabilities into a single, fully managed service. The offering covers onboarding, backup‑policy design, continuous monitoring, reporting, incident response and restoration support, extending protection to hybrid and multi‑cloud environments—including on‑premises infrastructure, ZainTECH Cloud, public cloud platforms, Microsoft 365, SaaS applications, databases, virtual machines, containers and file/NAS workloads.
“We are racing to modernise our digital infrastructure, but resilience has not kept pace,” said Gregg Petersen, Regional Director for the Middle East at Cohesity. “Our research shows that 59 % of UAE organisations experienced a material cyberattack in the past year, and with daily attacks on the country’s infrastructure continuing to rise, the question is no longer whether disruption will happen but how fast you can recover from it. This partnership with ZainTECH puts that capability directly in the hands of a trusted regional provider.”
Andrew Hanna, CEO of ZainTECH, added: “Our customers are asking harder questions about where their data lives and what happens to it when things go wrong. Through this partnership with Cohesity, we are strengthening our ability to deliver enterprise‑grade cyber resilience services that combine immutable protection, sovereign‑ready operations and recoverability frameworks designed for regulated and always‑on enterprise environments.”
ZainTECH’s enrollment in the Aspire Partner Programme unlocks training, certification and joint go‑to‑market support, allowing the company to scale the Cohesity offering across its customer base. The collaboration also complements ZainTECH’s existing AI SecOps service, which already provides security operations centre support across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The partnership is part of a broader trend in the MENA region where enterprises are prioritising data sovereignty and cyber resilience. By combining Cohesity’s AI‑powered platform with ZainTECH’s regional presence and managed‑services expertise, the joint offering aims to provide a secure, multi‑tenant system that meets the needs of regulated industries and always‑on businesses.
At present, the partnership is focused on delivering the BaaS solution to the five target markets. No specific pricing or rollout dates have been announced; the companies have stated that they will work with customers to design and implement the service in accordance with local data‑protection regulations.
In summary, the Cohesity–ZainTECH partnership brings together a leading AI‑driven data‑security platform and a regional digital‑solutions provider to offer a fully managed backup and cyber‑resilience service across the Gulf and surrounding countries. The collaboration addresses the region’s growing cyber‑attack frequency and the need for sovereign‑ready, immutable data protection, positioning enterprises to recover more quickly from disruptions.
