Swimlane recently appointed Ashraf Sheet as vice president of the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) regions, according to a press release.
“Ashraf brings immense credibility and go-to-market experience throughout META, and I’m excited to have him lead Swimlane’s expansion in the region,” senior vice president of worldwide sales for Swimlane, Jim Pickering, said. “Our unique low-code approach to security automation is a game-changer for security teams in META, offering a solution that meets the region’s most-demanding and constantly evolving security operations requirements.”
Under his new role, Sheet will be tasked with developing the company’s growth and go-to-market strategies and further fueling the demand for security automation in the META region.
“As the complexity and sophistication of attacks persists, security teams are making every effort to mature their operations with security automation at the center,” Sheet said. “Swimlane offers customers a system of record for security operations with the ability to enable automation in and outside of the SOC. Swimlane’s low-code approach to automation means that customers can unlock new use cases previously not possible with traditional security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR).”
The appointment comes amid a scarcity of cybersecurity professionals. According to an ISC report, the market is in need of a replenishment of approximately 2.72 million cybersecurity professionals and a growth rate of 65% in order to effectively fulfill the defense demands of organization assets.
The Middle East cybersecurity market, to which Sheet will soon contribute to, is projected to grow from $20.3 billion in 2022 to $44.7 billion by 2027.
Currently ranking as the largest global security automation company, Swimlane also solidified its expansion into META with a $70 million growth funding round deal, helmed by Activate Capital. Its turbine system helps reduce manual labor and the duration of tasks required for security event responses.
Bringing in more than two decades of cybersecurity experience, Sheet has held significant sales and channel at InfoBlox and LinkShadow, and various well-known brands from the Middle East, Turkey and Africa.
“Swimlane Turbine was introduced earlier this year to address this challenge, representing a breakthrough in low-code security automation that captures hard-to-reach telemetry and expands actionability beyond today’s closed extended detection and response (XDR) ecosystems,” a recent press release explains. “The platform provides maximum flexibility for META organizations with cloud, on-prem and air-gapped deployment options for secure-access environments.”