Alaa AlBahrani has taken up a new role as Head, Information Security Operations at Kuwait Finance House B.S.C. (c), according to his LinkedIn announcement. The role is on-site and began in October 2026.
He moves up within the organisation. Since March 2025 he has been Head of IT Cyber Security Operations at the bank, which was formerly Ahli United Bank. There, he established the IT Cyber Security Operations department and set its strategy across cyber defence, identity and access management, VAPT and security technologies. In his expanded role, he now leads the wider Information Security Operations remit with Group-level visibility.
His responsibilities include overseeing the Security Operations Centre and making sure incident response and threat detection meet agreed SLAs. He holds executive accountability for a significant multi-year cybersecurity investment portfolio and leads budget planning for IT security operations. He reports to the executive leadership of Technology and Operations and presents security status, incidents, compliance and investment priorities to executive management and the Group Information and Cyber Security Committee. He also monitors compliance with PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and SWIFT CSP controls and coordinates audits and penetration tests through to remediation, including UK audit obligations. He reports maintaining a strong resilience posture, including a year with zero major security breaches.
Before KFH, he spent four years at Ahli United Bank, rising from Information Security Manager to Senior Manager, Information and Cyber Security. He led the Group SOC and the data security programme across Bahrain and the UK, and ran cyber-crisis simulation exercises to test incident response. Earlier, he was Regional Cyber Security Leader at GE from 2016 to 2021, serving as in-country CISO for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Before that, he built the IT function at Isa Cultural Centre in Bahrain from scratch.
He holds CISM, CCISO, CISSP and GIAC GSOM certifications and a PhD. As banks in the GCC face rising cyber threats and stricter regulation, security operations leadership is becoming a board-level priority, and this appointment reflects that shift.
){kind=link}