The UAE is setting a new global benchmark for the secure and responsible adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). As the nation accelerates its AI adoption, the UAE Cyber Security Council (CSC), Open Innovation AI, and Cisco, working in strategic collaboration with Emircom, announced the establishment of the National AI Test and Validation Lab. This is a first-of-its-kind facility to help UAE government entities and private sector organisations test, validate and certify AI models, agents and applications for security, safety and trustworthiness.
H.E. Dr. Mohamed Al-Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity, UAE Government and Chairman of the UAE Cyber Security Council said: “Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the fabric of government services, critical infrastructure and everyday life in the UAE. The National AI Test and Validation Lab offers the country a sovereign capability to ensure that every AI model and every AI agent deployed in our economy is secure, trustworthy and aligned with our national policies. This is how we turn the UAE’s ambition to lead in AI into concrete, verifiable assurance for our citizens.”
A Sovereign Environment for AI Security
Hosted in the UAE, and operated under the governance of the Cyber Security Council, the Lab is designed with the aim of enabling AI deployments that are aligned with UAE cybersecurity policies related to AI, cloud and critical information infrastructure. Additionally, it aims to assess the models’ compliance against international standards such as ISO 42001, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF, and the OWASP frameworks for LLMs and AI agents.
Comprehensive Assessment Framework
The Lab provides a comprehensive evaluation of AI systems aiming to ensure the highest standards of reliability. Assessments cover:
- Model Security: Testing for robustness and safety.
- Threat Defence: Identifying vulnerabilities like prompt-injection and jailbreak attempts.
- Data Integrity: Monitoring for data leakage and privacy risks.
- Supply-Chain Security: Verifying the integrity of models and weights.
- Agent Autonomy: Evaluating risks associated with agent tool-use.
- Regulatory Compliance: Ensuring alignment with UAE AI, cloud, and cybersecurity mandates.
Systems that successfully pass these evaluations will receive a national certification mark. This provides regulators, operators, and citizens with clear assurance that the AI system is secure and verified.
Fady Younes, Managing Director for Cybersecurity at Cisco Middle East, Turkey, Africa, Romania, and CIScommented: “In the AI era, security cannot be an afterthought; it must be embedded within all infrastructure. Our collaboration with the UAE Cyber Security Council and Open Innovation AI marks a pivotal moment in securing the future of the UAE’s digital economy. By combining our secure, AI-ready infrastructure with the UAE’s proactive regulatory vision, we are creating a global blueprint for an AI ecosystem that is resilient by design, protected at scale, and inherently trustworthy.”
Dr. Abed Benaichouche, Chief Executive Officer, Open Innovation AI commented: “Securing AI cannot be a one-time exercise, models evolve, agents act autonomously, and new attack techniques emerge every week. With the UAE Cyber Security Council and Cisco, we are industrialising AI security: continuously red-teaming, testing and certifying AI systems at a scale that matches how fast they are being deployed. We expect the Lab to analyse tens to hundreds of thousands of agents per year, and we are proud to put our platform at the service of the UAE’s national mission.”
A Unified Technology Stack
The Lab is built on a high-performance foundation designed for scale. By combining Cisco’s secure infrastructure with Open Innovation AI’s software, the Lab is designed with the aim to automate policy conformance and evidence collection. Key components include:
- Cisco AI-Ready Infrastructure: Secure networking and high-performance compute powered by NVIDIA GPUs.
- Open Innovation Cluster Manager (OICM): Orchestrates end-to-end AI workloads.
- OI AI Security & Cisco AI Defence: Provides comprehensive red-teaming and automated testing.
Operational at Scale
The Lab is already operational. Over the coming months, the facility aims to scale to analyse tens of thousands of AI agents annually, supporting the UAE’s rapid adoption of agentic AI.
Open to government and industry
The Lab will serve federal and local government entities, critical national infrastructure operators, financial services, healthcare, energy and telecommunications, as well as UAE-based AI developers seeking to demonstrate that their models and agents meet national requirements before going to market.
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