Transmed has transformed its security operations with Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex platform, deployed through the Unit 42 Managed XSIAM service. Dr. Ahmad Mourad, Chief Information Officer at Transmed, explains how AI, automation and a fully managed SOC are helping the FMCG giant move from reactive security to proactive protection while supporting its rapidly expanding regional operations.

What prompted you to embark on this SOC transformation journey? Was it part of Transmed’ s overall cyber-resilience strategy or driven by the specific business requirements of the FMCG sector?

It was definitely part of our strategy and an intentional decision. It wasn’ t prompted by any specific incident.

Basically, we wanted to move away from the traditional way of protecting the organisation and rethink how we detect and protect against threats. This was part of a three-year strategy where we identified six key areas of security.

One is physical security, which is non-technology related, and we are working very closely with HR and a few other partners on that. The other areas are largely technology-oriented and include cloud security, network security, application security, data, endpoints and users.

We wanted to start by building a strong SOC foundation. Traditionally, our team was running multiple tools, aggregating logs and working with different scripts and databases. That approach did not really work well because every time we had an incident, it would take forever to track and investigate.

By the time you detect an incident, especially if it is AI-related, it is probably already too late. So, as part of our strategy, we wanted not only to modernise but to completely transform our security operations.

And I believe you have now moved from a reactive security approach to a more proactive security posture?

That was one of our key objectives. Hopefully, we can eventually reach a more preventive approach, but we are trying to take it one step at a time.

Today, we have the peace of mind that we are very close to achieving that preventive element. But yes, we definitely wanted to become much more

WWW. INTELLIGENTCISO. COM / MIDDLE-EAST 15