The EhsanLab blog

Notes from the field.

Practical writing on security, quality and compliance in Saudi Arabia and the GCC, from the engineers who do the work.

ComplianceLatest

The first 72 hours after a personal data breach under the PDPL

Saudi controllers have 72 hours to notify SDAIA after becoming aware of a personal data breach. The hour-by-hour decisions you make, and the work you did before, decide whether you can.

Oct 19, 2026 · 11 min read
Read article

Latest

ASEhsanLab AppSec Teamin Cybersecurity

Securing generative AI features with the OWASP LLM Top 10

A chatbot or RAG copilot inside a banking app is a new attack surface running on old failure modes. The OWASP LLM Top 10 names them; here is how we design and test around the ones with no clean fix.

13 min read

ASEhsanLab AppSec Teamin Cybersecurity

API authorization, object by object

Broken object level authorization is the finding we raise most often on API engagements, and one of the few you can design out for good rather than patch endpoint by endpoint.

13 min read

STEhsanLab Security Teamin Cybersecurity

Mobile banking app security with the OWASP MASVS

A banking app runs on a device the customer, and sometimes an attacker, fully controls. MASVS v2 gives you eight control groups to check; here is what each means for a Saudi wallet or banking app.

12 min read

QEEhsanLab Quality Engineeringin QA Testing

Stop retrying flaky tests and start reading them

A test that passes on the second try found something and was then told to be quiet. How to measure flakiness, quarantine it properly, and catch the product races that blanket retries hide.

12 min read

STEhsanLab Security Teamin Cybersecurity

Ransomware resilience: backups that actually restore

Attackers go after your backups before they encrypt anything, and when they succeed the ransom gets paid and recovery costs multiply. Design the backup as a target, then prove it restores.

11 min read

QEEhsanLab Quality Engineeringin Quality Engineering

DORA metrics for quality leaders

Test counts and coverage percentages tell leadership almost nothing about delivery. DORA's five metrics connect the work your test automation does to outcomes a CTO already tracks.

12 min read

QEEhsanLab Quality Engineeringin Quality Engineering

Load testing for payday: model arrivals, not users

Most load tests model a fixed number of users looping. Payday traffic arrives at a rate instead, and that difference is what breaks systems at the worst possible minute.

11 min read

CAEhsanLab Compliance Advisoryin Compliance

SAMA CSF Level 3 is an evidence problem

Technically strong teams still fall short of Level 3, and so do teams with thick policy binders. In both directions the gap is evidence that a control is documented, approved and monitored.

12 min read

ASEhsanLab AppSec Teamin DevSecOps

Security scanners in CI: what should break the build

Adding scanners takes an afternoon. The gating policy is the hard part: block on everything and someone comments the gate out, block on nothing and the findings pile up unread.

12 min read