The Series · 2026

2026 Circuit·02Confirmed

OT SecurityFirst

The control rooms of a region, in one room.

OT, ICS & critical-infrastructure cybersecurity summits — Saudi Arabia, UAE & Africa. Aligned to NCA OTCC-1:2022 & IEC 62443.

2026 Circuit

OT MENA·Johannesburg·Jubail·Muscat+ more under review

Partner with us→How we partner→

02The Cost of Doing Nothing

$5.56M

Avg Industrial Breach Cost

IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, 2025

The room where that number gets smaller.

200+OT & ICS Security Leaders on the circuit — Saudi Arabia · UAE · Africa

052026 Editions confirmed — NCA OTCC · IEC 62443 · NIS2 aligned

03The Thesis

Most summits sell access. We curate intelligence.

Three principles separate an OT Security First room from a trade-show booth. They show up on every agenda, in every vetting call, on every Chatham House floor.

OT Security First · Abu Dhabi

The room, in motion.

2026

Practitioner-led, not vendor-driven.

The stage belongs to people who own the risk — sitting CISOs, ICS architects, and plant-floor defenders from operators across the Gulf and Africa. Vendors earn their voice; they don't buy it.

OT Security First Abu Dhabi — executive networking

Aligned to the standards the room is audited against.

Every session ends with a takeaway a head of OT security can walk into a compliance review with — a control mapped, a mitigation logged, a peer confirmed. Time on the floor pays back time in the boardroom.

OT Security First Abu Dhabi — main session

Pure OT. Zero IT detour.

Oil & gas, power & utilities, petrochemicals, water, nuclear, manufacturing, mining, transport, smart cities — the sectors the Middle East and Africa cannot afford to lose. Every keynote, panel, and closed-door roundtable stays on the plant floor. No IT-side compromises, no generalist noise.

OT Security First Abu Dhabi — live session

04The Past

The debut edition. In motion.

Abu Dhabi · February 2026 — the proof-of-concept year.

UAE·Abu Dhabi

The first room in the region where ICS defenders set the agenda.

Sitting CISOs and OT security heads from Mubadala, ENOC, KNPC, DP World, Oman LNG, Yokogawa, and the UAE Cyber Security Council on stage. Refinery CISOs, national-grid defenders, port authority heads, and water utility architects in the room. Claroty, Dragos, Nozomi Networks, Xage, OPSWAT on the floor. Enough to prove the model — and the demand for an OT-only room.

01Edition run

34Speakers on stage

150+Industrial leaders

15+OT partners

05The Arc

From here, the corridor industrializes.

Present · 2026OT MENA · Johannesburg confirmed. Jubail & Muscat on deck. UAE CIIP, NCA OTCC, South Africa NCIIP — one circuit.

02 Open · 02 Upcoming

01Open

Virtual Boardroom

OT MENA

OT Security First · Regional Virtual

OT Security First · South Africa

When26 August 2026

Upcoming · registration opens soon

JubailSA07 October 2026Soon

MuscatOMTBC 2026Soon

Future · 2027+Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait City — the next Gulf plants on the map.

2027 · Under review

Kuwait CityKWGulf

DohaQAGulf

RiyadhSAGulf

+ more under review

Year-round research, persistent CISO councils, and additional cities under review. Partners who commit early shape the blueprint.

06The Room

The badges read Director or above.

A room is only as good as the names on the badges. Every attendee is vetted against a published OT-security remit before an invite is issued — no title-inflators, no generalist IT consultants in disguise. Just the people who own the PLCs, the SCADA historians, the refinery control networks, and the audit response to NCA OTCC-1:2022 or UAE CIIP.

Role mix

CISO / Head of OT Security

36%

VP / Director, Industrial Security

24%

Plant Manager / OT Architect

18%

Regulator & Government

12%

Vendor & Solution Leads

10%

Industries represented

10 sectors

Oil & GasPower & UtilitiesPetrochemicalsWater & WastewaterNuclearManufacturingMining & MetalsTransport & LogisticsSmart CitiesGovernment & Critical Infrastructure

On the stage

Recent speakers — a partial list.

80+ on the record

H.E. Dr. Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cyber Security — H.E. Dr. Mohamed Al Kuwaiti
Head of Cyber Security
UAE Government

Ali Al Kaf Alhashmi, VP Cyber Security & Technology — Ali Al Kaf Alhashmi
VP Cyber Security & Technology
Mubadala

Shaytel Patel, Group SVP Technology Audit — Shaytel Patel
Group SVP Technology Audit
DP World

Ali AlQallaf, Head of Cybersecurity Operations — Ali AlQallaf
Head of Cybersecurity Operations
KNPC

Abdulhakeem Al Alawi, Information Security Officer — Abdulhakeem Al Alawi
Information Security Officer
Oman LNG

Khaled Al Teneiji, Cyber Security Head — Khaled Al Teneiji
Cyber Security Head
ENOC

Wissam Al-Nasairi, OT Security EMEA Lead — Wissam Al-Nasairi
OT Security EMEA Lead
IBM Consulting

Mohammed Shoukat Ali, GM & Head Global Cybersecurity CoE — Mohammed Shoukat Ali
GM & Head Global Cybersecurity CoE
Yokogawa

Meet the full roster80+ speakers across the series

07How to Engage

Three ways in. Pick your altitude.

Sponsor a room, earn an invite, or take the stage. Pick the altitude that fits your brief and the form below routes you to the right team.

Sponsor01

Back the only OT-only room in MEA.

Headline, strategic, or associate partnership across Jubail, Johannesburg, Muscat, and Virtual MENA. Your product in front of the CISOs running Saudi Aramco, ADNOC, Mubadala, Eskom, ENOC, KNPC and Oman LNG — the operators buying Claroty, Dragos, Nozomi, Xage, OPSWAT budgets this cycle.

Keynote & panel placement in the OT-only stream
Branded OT demo lounge or closed CISO boardroom
Pre-qualified one-to-one intros with refinery, grid, utility CISOs
Full media rights · photo · broadcast · research
Co-authored whitepaper distributed to 3,000+ MEA OT leaders

Request sponsorship deck

Attend02

Sit with peers who run the control rooms.

Invite-only, no cost to attend for qualified operators: CISOs, heads of OT security, SCADA leads, plant managers, and regulators from oil & gas, power, water, petrochemicals, nuclear, manufacturing, mining, transport and smart cities. Share notes on ransomware containment, IEC 62443 implementation, and vendor-risk audits — under Chatham House Rule.

Invite-only · plant, refinery, grid & regulator badges
Chatham House Rule sessions — no press, no recording
Closed-door CISO roundtables on active IR & post-incident review
IEC 62443 & NCA OTCC aligned content · CPE credits available
Cross-edition circuit access across KSA, UAE, Africa

Request an invite

Speak03

Share what you've seen on the plant floor.

The stage belongs to operators who've lived the incident: post-Triton response, ransomware on a utility, a Stuxnet-style supply-chain compromise, a live NCA OTCC audit. If you hold a senior OT security, ICS, or critical-infrastructure brief in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, South Africa, or the wider GCC — pitch the session. The room will be in the front row.

Keynote · Panel · Fireside · CISO roundtable
On-stage launch of your OT research or field report
Closed-door incident-review facilitation
Speaker placement across every 2026 edition
Editorial support · media rights · video distribution

Submit a speaker profile

08Proof

Read the ledger. Ask the names.

Unscripted voices from the room — refinery CISOs, grid defenders, ICS architects — captured on-site at the Abu Dhabi debut, minutes after the sessions wrapped. No edits, no talking points.

In frames

OT Security First Abu Dhabi 2026 — the room, the stage, the plant-floor conversation.

6 frames

The gallery

From the room.

On-site · 5 clips

Testimonial

Our Past Series

Partners & Sponsors

Backed by the OT security vendors the room actually deploys — Claroty, Dragos, Nozomi Networks, Xage, OPSWAT, Tenable, Yokogawa, Sonicwall, Fortinet — plus regional integrators across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Africa.

A partial list · 50+ across the series

09 · Join

Ready to secure the plant floor?

Tell us which edition — Jubail, Johannesburg, Muscat, Virtual MENA, or the whole 2026 circuit. Sponsorship, invite, or speaker pitch. Our team replies within two working days with a tailored proposal aligned to your OT security, compliance, or commercial mandate.

Become a Summit Sponsor

Put your brand in the room with top decision-makers worldwide. Sponsorship packages are designed for maximum visibility and qualified lead generation.

Boardroom hosting & keynote slots

Qualified lead generation

Premium brand visibility worldwide

Trusted by 80+ sponsors across 6+ global markets

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Message (Optional)

Your information is kept confidential. We'll only use it to respond to your inquiry.

partnerships@eventsfirstgroup.comOffice M07, The Light Commercial Tower·Arjan, Dubai

10Our Other Series

OT Security First is one of four. See the whole portfolio.

Four invite-only series, one curation standard. Cybersecurity for CISOs, OT & ICS for industrial defenders, AI & data for the CDO seat, operational excellence for the COO — same practitioner-led format, different mandates.

Cyber First

Cybersecurity summits for CISOs · Gulf, Africa, South Asia

Explore the series

Digital First

AI & data strategy for CDOs · enterprise intelligence

Explore the series

OPEX First

Operational excellence · automation · COO & transformation

Explore the series

Roundtable

Invite-only executive boardrooms · closed-door C-suite

Explore the series