Moving security to the core of data as AI workloads in hybrid cloud force a redesign of protection and readiness

As AI projects accelerate their shift from narrow pilot models to large-scale enterprise deployment, the challenge of data management and security emerges as one of the most complex technical obstacles. NetApp is participating in the LEAP 2026 conference held at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center in Malham, to present its platform designed to make data ready for AI workloads and protected across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This participation comes as organizations move to embed AI systems into the core of their operational processes, coinciding with the designation of 2026 as the Saudi Arabia AI year and the building of capabilities needed to broaden its use.

The AI challenge is no longer limited to the power of mathematical models; it has shifted toward the infrastructure’s ability to make data available, govern it, and retrieve it at the moment of danger.Multi-environment and hybrid-cloud realities distribute databases and business logs across on-premises data centers and disparate cloud servers, creating genuine complexities in how that data is accessed, managed and secured. Suhail Hassanein, regional general manager for NetApp in the Middle East and Africa, explains that a company’s competitive edge when moving to full production is closely tied to how quickly they can make their data available, govern it, protect it and supply it to models wherever they reside.

The fundamental shift imposed by this architecture lies in the security philosophy; traditional network-perimeter barriers are no longer sufficient to protect the complex data flows that feed inference and training models. Saeed Al-Zahrani, NetApp’s director in Saudi Arabia, points out the need to embed security within the data itself rather than only at the outer boundaries. This approach relies on self-defending mechanisms powered by AI that can detect threats autonomously and ensure rapid recovery and data restoration, turning protection from an external firewall into a response layer integrated into the storage and processing pipeline.

This architectural shift reshuffles the priorities of technology and information-security leaders in the region between cloud and operational sovereignty.For enterprises, banks and service providers in the Gulf, Egypt and the Levant that operate hybrid architectures combining public cloud and restricted data centers, this proposition means a direct change in how protection budgets are allocated; the focus is no longer on purchasing separate perimeter-monitoring solutions, but on selecting storage layers that possess self-recovery capabilities and inherent hardening of data against disruption. It also requires data-engineering teams to acquire a new skill: configuring data pipelines to meet governance requirements and the immediate readiness demanded by AI, without sacrificing latency or becoming entangled in the complexities of moving between multiple cloud platforms.