Riyadh's Five-Star Hotels Now Host Hacker Coworking Floors

I checked into a Riyadh hotel and found a flyer advertising "silent SOC pods" alongside spa services. Turns out the hotel converted an entire floor into a hacker coworking lounge—Faraday tents, malware sandboxes, on-call baristas who understand NDAs. Oil execs and cybersecurity crews mingle over espresso and zero-day gossip.

Saudi Arabia wants to become a security powerhouse, and apparently that means pampering analysts like rock stars. The logic is twisted but effective: lure talent with luxury, and they'll stay through 3 a.m. incident response calls.

Part of me loves it; part of me worries we're glamorizing burnout. When malware triage comes with lavender towels, it's easy to forget breaches usually stem from sloppy basics. Still, if the future SOC is a penthouse, Riyadh is ahead of Silicon Valley.