UAE launches first national lab to test and certify AI systems
New facility validates AI models and agents for security and trustworthiness
#UAE #governance – The UAE Cyber Security Council, US-based global networking and cybersecurity company Cisco, and AI solutions provider Open Innovation AI, working in collaboration with telecommunications company Emircom, have established the National AI Test and Validation Lab. A first-of-its-kind facility in the UAE, designed to test, validate and certify AI models, agents and applications for security, safety and trustworthiness. Hosted in the Emirates and governed by the Cyber Security Council, the lab will serve government entities, critical infrastructure operators and private sector organisations deploying AI at scale. Systems that pass evaluation receive a national certification mark.
SO WHAT? – As agentic AI moves from pilot to production across government and industry, the question of whether an AI system is actually secure, compliant and trustworthy becomes critical infrastructure in its own right. As a country that its accelerating its implementation of agentic AI across all sectors, the UAE now has a sovereign facility to validate AI models, agents and apps at scale. Already in operation, the lab will have the capacity to analyse tens to hundreds of thousands of AI agents annually, .This functional national capability gives the UAE a verifiable assurance layer that few countries anywhere in the world can yet match.
KEY POINTS
The UAE Cyber Security Council, Cisco, and Open Innovation AI have launched the National AI Test and Validation Lab, a first-of-its-kind facility to test, validate and certify AI models, agents and applications for security, safety and trustworthiness. National technology company Emircom is a strategic collaborator in the initiative.
The lab is already operational and has been designed to scale up to analyse hundreds of thousands of AI agents annually, supporting the UAE’s accelerating adoption of agentic AI across government and industry.
AI systems that successfully pass the lab’s evaluations receive a national certification mark, giving regulators, operators and citizens clear, verifiable assurance that a deployed AI system meets UAE national security and compliance standards.
Assessments cover six key areas: model security, threat defence, data integrity, supply-chain security, agent autonomy and regulatory compliance. Threat defence testing specifically targets vulnerabilities such as prompt-injection attacks and jailbreak attempts: risks that grow significantly as AI systems become more autonomous.
The kab tests compliance against both UAE national cybersecurity mandates and major international standards, including ISO 42001, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF, and the OWASP frameworks for large language models and AI agents. This dual alignment positions UAE-certified systems for broader global credibility.
The lab’s technical infrastructure combines Cisco’s AI-ready secure networking and high-performance NVIDIA GPU compute with Open Innovation AI’s software platform, including its Cluster Manager for orchestrating AI workloads and its AI Security tools for red-teaming and automated testing.
The facility will serve a broad range of sectors: federal and local government entities, critical national infrastructure operators, financial services, healthcare, energy and telecommunications, as well as UAE-based AI developers seeking national certification before taking products to market.
The initiative is governed by the UAE Cyber Security Council, ensuring the lab operates in direct alignment with UAE national AI, cloud and critical infrastructure policies.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]