Saviynt is stepping up its expansion across the Middle East and Africa with the appointment of cybersecurity veteran Kamel Heus as Vice President of Sales for MEA, including Turkey.
Based in Dubai, Heus will be responsible for growing Saviynt’s regional business, from new customer acquisition and renewals to expanding existing accounts. He will also oversee the company’s channel strategy, partner ecosystem and local go-to-market organisation.
The appointment comes as organisations across the region accelerate cloud adoption and AI deployments, creating a more complex identity security challenge. Saviynt is increasingly positioning identity as a control point not only for employees and applications, but also for the growing number of AI agents accessing enterprise systems and data.
Heus will have a particular focus on expanding Saviynt’s presence in Saudi Arabia and developing local hosting capabilities to address requirements around in-region delivery and data residency.
“MEA represents a significant opportunity for Saviynt as organisations across the region accelerate their digital transformation and increasingly look to AI to transform how they operate and grow,” said Pete Angstadt, Chief Commercial Officer at Saviynt. “We’re making a long-term investment in MEA, and his appointment is an important step in bringing Saviynt closer to our customers and partners.”
Heus brings two decades of enterprise cybersecurity sales experience across the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Before joining Saviynt, he served as Vice President, EMEA at Thales, where he led the company’s Identity and Access Management business across the region.
His previous leadership roles include positions at Centrify, now part of Delinea, and Sophos. He has been based in Dubai for more than a decade and has spent much of his career building cybersecurity businesses and partner networks across the region.
For Saviynt, one of the emerging areas Heus will address is the security of AI agents. As autonomous software agents gain access to enterprise applications, systems and data, they introduce identities that need to be discovered, governed and controlled much like traditional human identities.
Saviynt’s Zuma platform is designed to provide visibility into these AI identities and apply access controls, including least-privilege policies, throughout their lifecycle.
“The Middle East and Africa have become one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity markets in the world, and Identity sits right at the centre of it, especially as AI agents enter the enterprise,” said Kamel Heus, Vice President of Sales, MEA, Saviynt.
Heus said his priorities will include building Saviynt’s local presence, expanding its partner ecosystem and helping organisations secure access for both employees and AI-driven systems.
With a new regional sales leader and plans to expand in Saudi Arabia and local hosting, Saviynt’s move signals a deeper commitment to the MEA market as identity security becomes increasingly intertwined with cloud transformation and enterprise AI adoption.
