Merhaba, Cyber-Cairo!

It was somewhat sad saying goodbye to Singapore and its wonderful airport, but duty was calling so off we flew again…

So where next? Oh… that’s where! ->

Cairo – here we come!…

The journey wasn’t the easiest since there are no direct flights from Singapore. This resulted in around 15 hours in the air and nearly 24 door-to-door…

Alas, there was practically zero tourism while in Egypt. After a quick break to recover from the journey, we dove straight into a packed schedule at our main event here: the key regional expo-conference known as the FDC [Future of Digital Countries] 2025 Summit:

The FDC is an important event for countries in the Middle East and Africa that are seriously investing in digital transformation. Well, at least that’s the official word.

Why were we here? Because going digital without cybersecurity is a risky move, and Egypt’s looking for trustworthy partners in this field. Plus, they’re heavily investing in infrastructure (just look at the non-stop construction in Cairo – more on that in a later post), and the economy’s growing steadily. So yeah, there’s a lot of potential here.

It’s a modest exhibition-conference in terms of scale, but still a great space for useful networking…

We had a decent presence here too:

But since things are going so well for us here, maybe sometime soon we’ll upscale things…

Talks, roundtables, and presentations – including mine:

Time to explore the rest of the exhibition. It was a small one – you can see it all in about 30–60 minutes. Lots of big local names (though generally not heard of outside the region) ->

Also present were some of our established competitors, some newer ones, plus those who’ve gone in for spot of rebranding:

Oh – PT! Nice surprise – always great to see home-grown cybersecurity companies making waves abroad. It’s about time! The world’s wide open! Why’s everyone still holding back? Something I’ve never understood…

PT organized a CTF (Capture the Flag) – a cyber challenge where teams race to hack into a virtual environment to reverse-hone their cybersecurity skills ->

Dozens of cyber-Egyptians showed up for the showdown:

And here come the results:

It was great to see fellow cyber-protectors out here doing their thing to save the world from the cyber-swine!

That’s all for now folks! Back soon!…

The best hi-res photos from Egypt are here.