Blog

An article by Dmitry Marinov, CTO of ANY.RUN, a UAE-based cybersecurity company

As the MENA startup ecosystem matures, cybersecurity has shifted from a back-office concern to a boardroom topic. With investors now demanding tangible proof of security controls—and not just compliance claims—founders must treat cybersecurity as a marker of operational maturity, not an afterthought.

In 2025, MENA startups face mounting pressure to align with both domestic compliance regimes (such as the UAE’s TDRA/NCA and KSA’s SAMA/NCA frameworks) and global investor expectations tied to ISO 27001, SOC2, and GDPR-like standards.

What’s new is that these aren’t just policies on paper — they now demand proof of practice. Startups are expected to demonstrate:

• Detonation of malware in sandbox environments
• Retention of threat activity logs for more than 30 days
• Mapping detections to MITRE ATT&CK and maintaining incident response workflows that go beyond email warnings

If just three years ago regional VCs rarely asked about security during due diligence, today investors and auditors increasingly treat this data as evidence of operational maturity, not just hygiene.

Still, the gap between what investors expect and what is happening on the ground has never been wider. In my incident response work across the MENA region, I’ve seen the same pattern repeatedly: startups with world-class products running on completely flat networks — all servers, workstations, and development environments on the same subnet with limited internal firewalls, no log retention beyond a week, and employees opening suspicious files directly on their laptops.

Becoming “security-capable” doesn’t require a fortune or a full SOC team. But it does require understanding what’s actually hitting startups in this region.

The most common types of attacks against startups in MENA

Startups everywhere face a standard set of cyber risks — phishing, ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) scams, and supply chain attacks. While Western attackers often aim to exfiltrate data at scale, many MENA-targeted campaigns are financially driven, delivering loaders like PrivateLoader or SmokeLoader as access points for ransomware groups.

Startups in the UAE and Saudi Arabia face disproportionately high volumes of commodity malware, rarely seen in ecosystems like those in the EU and the US. The region exhibits a distinctive flavour and intensity in specific vectors:

• Phishing remains the dominant attack vector, particularly credential harvesting via impersonated Microsoft login pages, fake invoice links, and HTML file lures embedded in ZIP archives.
• Stealer malware and droppers are designed for low observability — running in 64-bit and ARM environments, evading UAC prompts, and avoiding overt persistence.
• Business Email Compromise (BEC) has experienced a sharp rise (29 % increase in attack volume just in the UAE), often involving pretexting and internal impersonation to reroute payments or extract sensitive documents.
• Malicious documents are declining in volume but persist in campaigns that use archive containers or disguise themselves as training files.

Common root causes and security blind spots in early-stage teams

The biggest misconception among startups is that security is a “scale problem”—something to worry about after product-market fit. In reality, security debt compounds like technical debt, and the longer you wait, the more it costs—in engineering time, customer trust, and valuation risk.

Attackers don’t wait for Series B funding. We’ve seen phishing kits and loaders hit within days of a product launch, especially in regions like MENA where sandboxing and logging practices are still maturing.

Investors are also asking earlier: by the time you’re raising your first institutional round, funds in Abu Dhabi or Riyadh are already requesting red-team reports and sandbox logs. The tipping point isn’t a breach — it’s your first customer. From the moment you handle user data or payment flows, you’re a target, whether you have 50 users or 50,000.

Across early-stage startups, the same weaknesses surface repeatedly:

1. Flat network setups: dev, staging, and production often run in the same network with overly broad access rights. A breach in one system can quickly spread to the rest.
2. Weak credential practices: even with MFA, teams often reuse passwords or share admin accounts, making it easy for attackers to move laterally once they get in.
3. Blind trust in endpoint security: many assume antivirus or EDR will block everything. In reality, most malware is designed to bypass these tools, especially when delivered via ZIP files or public CDNs.
4. Phishing and social engineering: startups underestimate how targeted phishing has become, with lures mimicking tax portals, banks, or government sites. Attackers also go after founders or CFOs via LinkedIn or WhatsApp using convincing pretexts.
5. Third-party dependencies: early-stage teams rely heavily on SaaS or vendors but rarely check their security posture, leaving exploitable blind spots.

A consistently overlooked mistake is lacking a safe place to open suspicious files. This doesn’t require a full-blown SOC or complex infrastructure — just a browser-based sandbox that lets your team safely detonate files in isolation.

Tools that enable this are easy to implement, yet many teams skip them entirely, assuming antivirus or email filters are “good enough.”

As a result, a single PDF or ZIP can slip through and trigger a compromise, especially where access controls are weak. Ultimately, it’s not just about detection — it’s about instilling a habit and providing a platform for your team to verify files before trusting them.

Practical security moves for small teams

Even without a dedicated SecOps function, early-stage startups can now reach higher levels of security maturity thanks to accessible, lightweight tools:

• SOC-as-a-Service: fractional security operations give small teams 24/7 monitoring, real-time alert triage, and incident response for a fraction of the cost of hiring analysts, often under $1,000 per month.
• Identity and access management: platforms such as Okta, Google Workspace with conditional access, or Tailscale help enforce MFA, granular access policies, and session visibility using the same APIs and dashboards developers already work with.
• Sandboxing and threat detection: modern browser-based sandboxes allow teams to safely detonate suspicious files and analyse malware behaviour. Combined with threat-intelligence feeds, they can instantly flag malicious URLs, file hashes, and reused attacker infrastructure — a key advantage in regions where phishing portals and CDN links are recycled frequently.
• Securing the build pipeline: integrate CI/CD scans (e.g., GitHub Actions) to catch known CVEs, leaked secrets, and dependency risks early.
• Leaning on security advisors: fractional CISOs or experienced advisors can help shape policies and guide incident response without the overhead of a full-time hire.

These practices don’t just close security gaps—they can also make a startup more credible to investors and partners. Keeping sandbox logs and IOC reports from suspected incidents shows that detection and response aren’t just aspirational.

A simple security whitepaper outlining key controls — identity management, backups, incident response — gives partners and investors clarity about how you operate. Regularly auditing third-party dependencies, especially open-source libraries, and pinning versions reduces supply-chain risk. And when your response plans are not only documented but also practised and version-controlled, it signals the kind of operational maturity investors value.

Five-step starter playbook for cybersecurity at a startup

Startups don’t need to build enterprise-grade security overnight, but a few foundational practices can make a dramatic difference in both security maturity and credibility.

1. Identity first: enforce MFA across all tools and eliminate shared logins via a password manager such as 1Password or Bitwarden.
2. Segment everything: separate dev, prod, and CI/CD into isolated VPCs with role-based IAM.
3. Sandbox early: integrate a sandbox to inspect suspicious documents, installers, and links before user execution.
4. Log and retain: utilise centralised logging solutions such as open-source tools like Wazuh SIEM to retain 30+ days of audit and network activity logs.
5. Test the human layer: run phishing simulations quarterly and train staff to recognise lures across email, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp.

These steps will not only reduce the likelihood of a breach but also build trust with users, speed up procurement, and make due diligence smoother when you’re raising capital.