smart home companies in Lebanon started as electricians, AV installers, or gadget resellers who added “smart” to their name when the market caught up. Newcleo didn’t start that way. It started with someone asking a different question: if every smart lock, camera, and thermostat in a home is now a device on a network, who’s actually responsible for making sure that network is safe?
That question came from Firas Abdel Dayem, a cybersecurity expert who founded Newcleo in 2015, not as a home automation company that later thought about security, but as a security-first company that happened to specialize in homes, offices, villas, and hotels.
Why a Cybersecurity Expert Started a Smart Home Company
Smart home automation and cybersecurity are usually treated as two separate industries. One installs the lights, locks, and cameras. The other worries about what happens if someone hacks them. In most markets, including Lebanon, those two skill sets rarely sit in the same company, let alone the same person.
Firas saw the problem from the inside: installers were connecting cameras, routers, and smart locks onto home networks with default passwords, open ports, and no segmentation, because their expertise was in wiring and automation logic, not in network security. The convenience was real. So was the exposure. One of Newcleo’s earliest projects was a villa in Achkout, where the same pattern that motivates Newcleo today showed up in miniature: cameras, locks, and networking equipment installed by different vendors, with no one responsible for how they worked together securely. That project became the template for how Newcleo approaches every installation since. Years later, from that first villa to the hundreds of homes, offices, and hotels that followed, clients consistently report systems that are not just convenient, but genuinely secure
Newcleo was built to close that gap: automation designed and installed by people who think like security professionals first.
Newcleo Since 2015: From First Installs to a Full Smart Ecosystem
While the exact timeline has stayed broad rather than year-by-year, the growth is visible in where the work has gone: Airbnb and short-term rental automation along the coast in Halat, Jounieh, and Batroun, office security and automation projects in Zahle, and a steady base of traditional home and villa installations across Lebanon. Each property type brought its own requirements: a rental with rotating guests needs different access control than a family home, and an office network carries different risks than a residential one
What started as home automation work has grown, over more than a decade, into a full smart ecosystem covering residential homes and villas, offices, and hotels and short-term rentals, alongside dedicated smart security, Wi-Fi and networking, and cybersecurity & AI services. Today, Newcleo has worked with more than 2,400 clients across Lebanon.
The Gap Nobody Else Was Filling
Ask most homeowners in Lebanon who installed their smart locks or cameras, and the answer is usually “an electrician” or “the company that sold us the system.” Ask them who checked whether that system could be accessed by someone outside the house, and most won’t have an answer.
That’s the gap Newcleo was built around. Every device added to a home, whether it’s a camera, a solar inverter, a smart switch, or a video intercom, is a new entry point on the network. Treating automation and security as separate problems means someone eventually has to notice they were never really separate at all.
What “Cybersecurity-First” Actually Means for Your Home or Office
In practice, this shows up in decisions that aren’t visible from the showroom but matter once a system is live: how devices are segmented on the network, whether default credentials are ever left in place, how remote access is secured, and whether a system is designed to fail safely during Lebanon’s frequent power and connectivity interruptions rather than exposing the home when it’s most vulnerable.Cybersecurity & AI Solutions in Lebanon | Newcleo
It’s the difference between a system that looks impressive on day one and a system that’s still safe to use two years later.
From Villas to Offices to Hotels: Where Experience Shows
Over the years, that same cybersecurity-first approach has been applied across very different environments: private villas where discretion and physical security matter as much as convenience, offices where a compromised device can mean a compromised business network, and hotels and Airbnb properties where dozens of guests cycle through the same access credentials every month Smart Office Automation in Lebanon | Newcleo. That experience extends beyond homes and hotels too: agricultural and irrigation projects, where sensors help monitor soil and water use to make operations more efficient, and work with the Lebanese diaspora abroad, whose properties are automated and monitored remotely, from checking water tanks and leaks to full home control, without needing to be in the country.
Meet Firas Abdel Dayem
“A smart home isn’t about devices, it’s about freedom, comfort, and peace of mind.” Firas Abdel Dayem, Founder, Newcleo
Firas Abdel Dayem is the founder of Newcleo Technologies and a Cybersecurity Architect with more than 10 years of experience in cybersecurity, infrastructure, and enterprise technology. He holds an MBA in Information Technology from the UK and has earned more than 20 professional certifications across cybersecurity, cloud, networking, and enterprise technologies, with academic exposure to areas including IoT and emerging technologies. His background in Microsoft security, network and endpoint protection, ISO 27001 ISO/IEC 27001:2022 – Information security management systems, GDPR, ethical hacking, and security operations led him to explore the intersection of cybersecurity, automation, IoT, and connected environments.
Through Newcleo, he combines his cybersecurity expertise with smart home and building automation to deliver secure, reliable, and intelligent technology solutions, the same combination that, in Lebanon, has largely been missing from an industry built mostly by hardware installers rather than security professionals.
Connect with Firas on LinkedIn Firas Abdel Dayem | LinkedIn
Why This Matters When You Choose an Installer
When you’re comparing quotes for a smart home, office, or hotel system, the honest question to ask any installer isn’t just “what can this do?” It’s “who is responsible for making sure this can’t be used against me?” Most installers won’t have a good answer, because it was never their area of expertise to begin with. At Newcleo, it’s the starting point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Newcleo only a cybersecurity company, or does it also do smart home installation? Both. Newcleo designs and installs full smart automation systems for homes, offices, and hotels, covering lighting, climate, security, networking, and entertainment, with cybersecurity built into the design from the start, not added afterward.
How long has Newcleo been operating in Lebanon? Newcleo was founded in 2015 and has been serving residential, commercial, and hospitality clients across Lebanon since.
Does working with a cybersecurity-led company cost more? Not necessarily. Segmenting a network properly or setting unique credentials during installation doesn’t add meaningful cost, it’s a matter of doing it correctly the first time, rather than retrofitting security later.
Can Newcleo audit or secure a smart home system installed by someone else? Yes. If you already have smart devices installed and want a security review, that’s something Newcleo can assess and fix without necessarily replacing existing hardware.