Prof. Fatemah Alharbi

Professor, Researcher, and Consultant in Cybersecurity and AI | Saudi Ambassador

Global Council of Responsible AI (GCRAI)

Global Ambassador for Saudi Arabia at the Global Council for Responsible AI, and a cybersecurity professor, researcher, consultant, and international speaker recognized nationally and globally as a multi-award-winning leader in cybersecurity and AI.

Speaker sessions

KalamCyber powered by WiCSME More than Cyber Women

13:00
Tue
02 Dec

Stage: The Back Room

Sessions Type: Podcast

DNS Under the Lens: A Longitudinal Assessment of Resilience and Robustness in Saudi Arabia

As Saudi Arabia advances its Vision 2030 digital transformation, the resilience of its Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure is critical to national cybersecurity. This session presents the first longitudinal study assessing DNS robustness across Saudi domains, spanning three decades of data (1994–2024) and over 37 million domains and subdomains.Central to this research is DNSsifter, a custom-built, multithreaded bruteforcing tool developed to enhance domain enumeration and uncover hidden dependencies. The session will walk attendees through a novel evaluation framework combining active scanning, passive data collection, analytical modeling, and vulnerability assessment.We explore five key metrics—nameserver redundancy, parent-child consistency, anycast adoption, caching efficiency, and DNSSEC deployment—providing data-driven insight into systemic weaknesses. The findings uncover substantial infrastructure fragility: over 25% of domains rely on a single nameserver, DNSSEC adoption is below 5%, and critical sectors like government and healthcare exhibit widespread misconfigurations. Vulnerabilities such as AXFR zone transfers, cache poisoning, and subdomain takeovers remain prevalent.This talk will equip attendees with a deeper understanding of DNS security in the Middle East, highlight emerging risks in national DNS ecosystems, and discuss recommendations for strengthening DNS hygiene and resilience. The session will be particularly valuable for cybersecurity professionals, national CERTs, DNS operators, and researchers focused on infrastructure security and measurement.

17:40
Tue
02 Dec

Stage: Briefings 1

Sessions Type: Presentation

Third-Party Domino Effect: Governance in an Interdependent Supply Chains

No governance, no brakes. Learn how decision rights, contract controls, continuous assurance, and rehearsed response keep a single vendor issue from becoming a multi-party outage - and how to prove it with metrics that matter.