Al-Baha University signs cybersecurity memoranda with Fortinet and Huawei

Al-Baha University signed two memoranda of understanding on the sidelines of LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, one with Fortinet's Saudi business and one with Huawei's, covering cooperation in cybersecurity, innovation and digital transformation and the exchange of expertise and knowledge. The signings were reported in Arabic and have not been picked up in English. Neither memorandum has a published value, term or first activity attached to it. Vendor agreements with universities are a well-established mechanism and they usually mean one of a small number of things: certification curricula taught inside a degree programme, equipment and lab software provided to the university, staff training, internships, or a jointly branded academy that runs alongside the formal syllabus. Both companies operate large versions of these programmes globally — the security vendor and the network equipment maker each maintain academy schemes that supply course material and certification pathways to institutions — and a Saudi university signing with both suggests curriculum and skills rather than research. That distinction matters when reading the wording. The memoranda mention cybersecurity, innovation and digital transformation. None of those phrases commits either company to fund research, and universities routinely sign vendor memoranda that resolve into a certification track and a lab. The reason it is still worth reporting is where the university is. Al-Baha sits in the south-west of the Kingdom, several hundred kilometres from the Riyadh and Dhahran corridor where most Saudi technology investment lands. Saudi Arabia's cybersecurity workforce problem is a national one, and it is not solved by graduates produced in the capital alone. An agreement that puts vendor certification material into a regional university is a small piece of a supply problem that every organisation hiring security staff in the Kingdom describes the same way: not enough people, competed for by everyone. The demand side of that equation has been on display all week. Security vendors have been pitching partner and channel capacity as their route into the Saudi market , which is a polite way of saying that the constraint is people who can implement what they sell. The National Cybersecurity Authority spent the same week signing a cooperation memorandum with Pakistan , and academic institutions have been signing their own: King Fahd Security College signed with Esri's Saudi arm on training and geospatial skills. Huawei's presence on both sides of the Saudi market — selling infrastructure while training the people who will run it — is a pattern the company has followed consistently in the region, and it has put its Saudi cloud credentials at the centre of its pitch this week . The measure of a memorandum like this is a number the university can publish: how many students sit a certification exam under it in the first academic year, and how many pass. Nothing else about it will be visible from outside. TechScoop is reporting from LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.