(ISC)² – the world’s largest nonprofit association of certified cybersecurity professionals – today announced the honorees of its 2022 (ISC)² Global Achievement awards, which recognize and celebrate individuals who have made monumental contributions to the cybersecurity industry and fortify (ISC)²’s mission to inspire a safe and secure cyber world.
“In a world where small businesses all the way up to our nation’s three-letter agencies depend on security for successful operations, cyber professionals are under more pressure than ever to perform,” said Clar Rosso, CEO, (ISC)². “These individuals deserve the utmost respect and recognition for their continued dedication to making our world a safer place. We look forward to being back in person this year at our (ISC)² Security Congress event in October to celebrate this year’s winners of the Global Achievement Awards.”
(ISC)² Global Achievement Awards
The Global Achievement Awards recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to cybersecurity and information security. Those who have made a difference in this ever-evolving industry, honoring tireless efforts and standards of excellence. Honorees were nominated by qualified colleagues, mentors and peers.
- The (ISC)² Senior Professional Award recognizes individuals who have significantly contributed to the enhancement of the information security workforce by demonstrating a leadership role in a relevant improvement initiative, program or project.
- Americas: Shawn Harris, CCSP, CISSP, CISSP-ISSAP, Senior Director, Information Security and Compliance at Chipotle Mexican Grill, for his involvement in the development and implementation of The Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), a cybersecurity control framework for cloud computing aligned to the CSA best practices that is considered the de-facto standard for cloud security and privacy.
- Asia-Pacific: Chou Yen Ju, CCSP, CISSP, Chief Information Security Officer at OneDegree Hong Kong Limited, for his involvement in the project that made OneDegree the first insurer in APAC and the second insurer in the world that provides digital asset exchanges, custodians, and wallet solution providers with insurance coverage. The project helps ensure industry best practice to manage the escalating cyber risk. Chou Yen Ju led a task force to contribute the Digital Asset Risk Assessment methodology to the underwriting, which realizes his vision of reducing the knowledge gap between the underwriters and cyber professions. The methodology can evaluate the digital asset’s risk and provide the clients best practice to manage the risk with the insurance coverage.
- EMEA: Ali Isikli, CCSP, CISSP, Systems Security Engineering Manager at ASELSAN, Inc., for his involvement in a project that affected the whole defense industry in Turkey. Over 10,000 people were impacted by this initiative. Following a series of penetration tests, the results were consolidated and presented to the board of directors with an emphasis on the necessity of building a team to oversee the implementation of security best practices in engineering processes and procedures. Ali founded the ASELSAN Cyber Security Team to oversee customer, internal development and management teams’ efforts to assess, identify and evaluate the Cyber Security Maturity level of systems. This included creating a secure system design culture among sub-contractors, business partners, and Turkish Cyber Security Cluster to consolidate cyber security best practices through the defense industry ecosystem.
- The (ISC)² Mid-Career Professional Award recognizes an individual who is at the mid-career stage and has demonstrated commitment and achievement in managing or implementing a vital component of a cyber, information, software, infrastructure program/project.
- Americas: Benjamin T. Koshy, CISSP, Chief Information Security Officer at Indian Health Service, for expanding the utility of IHS’ security information and event management (SIEM) system. This was previously only used to gather a small subset of security logs from information systems for use in incident response. The expansion enabled IHS to not only satisfy the cybersecurity logging requirements but also provide the service analytics to enhance the IHS mission objective.
- Asia-Pacific: Shakthi Priya Kathirvelu, CISSP, VP and Head of Information Security and IT at Funding Societies | Modalku Group, for her efforts in effectively building out and leading a dedicated information security team with defined functions for the largest SME digital financing and debt investment platform in Southeast Asia. This included expanding into a leading neobank to provide secure customer experience, while ensuring regulatory compliance in the countries the business operates in. In addition to contributing to fundraising for the organization, her efforts have also helped secure corporate resources during a period of significant growth for the organization.
- EMEA: Lucy Prudence Shenton, CISSP, Expert Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, for her involvement in a program that impacted the entire enterprise of a global financial institution – both internal users/employees as well as customers of the company. Driven by increased regulatory scrutiny and an increased competitive landscape, a large global financial institution needed to create a strategy and roadmap that optimized its cyber investments relative to the risk reduction of the initiatives it undertook. Lucy led the development of this strategy over the course of three months and secured a multi-million-dollar board-level commitment to invest in the necessary business-enabling capabilities that drove maximum impact to internal and external customers of the company. The program continued with a deep-dive architectural design into improving user experience and strengthening security of the organization’s identity and access management (IAM) capabilities as well as implementing a proof-of-concept of its Zero Trust identity architecture. In the end, this program not only helped to secure and protect enterprise-wide data, it also resulted in a differentiator for the organization by envisioning a streamlined identity and access management process for its millions of external customers and internal users.
- The (ISC)² Rising Star Professional Award recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of an up-and-coming professional who has made a significant impact in the information security industry early in their career. This year’s recipient is Rajvardhan Oak, Applied Scientist at Microsoft, for his involvement as part of the Network Protection team for Microsoft ads. Rajvardhan developed novel algorithms to detect poor quality traffic originating from specific questionable sources using clustering and other machine learning techniques. One of the key breakthroughs that provided significant improvement in time-to-detect and time-to-mitigate was correlation of data in a coherent manner across various disparate dataset to construct ground truth.
- The (ISC)² Government Professional Award recognizes government information security leaders whose commitment to excellence has helped to improve government information security and to advance an in-demand workforce.
- Americas: Jermone Andre Leach, CAP, CISSP, Defensive Cyber Operations Lead at the United States Coast Guard for his efforts in ensuring industry standard awareness and threat remediation to include a focus on International Defensive Cyber’s Hunt Forward Operations.
- EMEA: H.E. Dr. Mohamed Hamad Al-Kuwaiti, Head of Cyber Security at the UAE Government, for his involvement in elevating the UAE’s position as a global leader in the Cyber Security field, improving the national cyber security capabilities and collaborating with other nations to improve the national cyber defense and response mechanisms. Dr. Al-Kuwaiti led the UAE “National Cyber Capacity Building” initiative, which is a multipronged program addressing several crucial aspects to improve the UAE’s national cyber resilience and to strengthen the cyber security posture of the UAE. The UAE “National Cyber Capacity Building” initiative’s success has made the UAE a role model for other countries.
(ISC)² Board Awards
The Board Awards recognize outstanding contributions and achievements in the field of cybersecurity over the course of a career. The following award recipients were hand-selected by the (ISC)² Board of Directors.
- The (ISC)² Diversity Award honors individuals who represent the core values of (ISC)² through significant contributions in driving a more diverse workforce in the cybersecurity community.
- Sarah B. Lee, PhD, Director of the School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi. Lee co-founded The Last Mile Education Fund to provide financial support to college students in computing majors when they find themselves faced with challenges beyond their control. Since then, the non-profit organization has provided funding for 1,200 women who were facing financial obstacles to degree completion. Recently, the organization was awarded a $6 million grant by Microsoft.
(ISC)² CEO Award
The (ISC)² CEO Award recognizes members who have significantly impacted the cybersecurity community by contributing to (ISC)² through dedicated and exceptional volunteer efforts. Nominations are made solely by (ISC)² Board members and executive staff.
This year’s recipient is Andrew Smeaton, CISSP, Chief Information Security Officer at DataRobot, Inc. Andrew is a globally experienced certified Information Security executive and Board Advisor with a track record of success in complex, multi-stakeholder environments across Europe, North America, and the Middle East. His experience includes building information security teams from the ground up, enabling sales as a customer facing CISO, maturing systems to reduce risk, and developing streamlined reporting to provide executive insight into data risks. Andrew transitions reactive information security environments into a culture where proactive prevention of information security risk is the norm. Andrew has over 22 years of experience in the banking, financial services, startups, and healthcare industries. He is experienced in all facets of IT/IS Security & Risk Management, including acquisitions and disaffiliations, and has a track record of developing and implementing security strategies from inception through execution. In addition to his corporate experience, Andrew has also served on the executive boards for international conferences and advised government agencies on information security subjects.
(ISC)² Chapter Recognition Awards
The Regional (ISC)² Chapter Recognition Awards are presented to an official chapter of (ISC)² within a specific region that best promotes the vision of (ISC)² by inspiring a safe and secure cyber world. The chapter must demonstrate a well-rounded offering of activities and services designed to benefit its members and affiliates, while making a significant contribution to the profession and local community. This year’s recipients in each region are:
- Asia-Pacific – Colombo, Sri Lanka Chapter – The chapter hosted a series of panel discussions and conferences with multiple organizations to connect with the community to foster education, raise awareness, and support diversity and inclusion. The chapter was a partner for the 14th Annual National Conference on Cyber Security, attended by 1,046 participants, where the President moderated the panel discussion on “COVID 19 Triggered Shift to Digital.” The chapter also offers mentorship programs and workshops for students which encourages them to pursue a career in cybersecurity, hosting multiple workshops with over 50 students in attendance at various sessions.
- EMEA – Hellenic Chapter – The chapter held multiple member meetings in addition to participating in industry events with other organizations. The chapter focused on connection by launching a newsletter and utilized social media to cultivate their membership. They implemented several creative ways to earn or win CPE credits to reward chapter members and increase engagement. They held CISSP training, Safe and Secure Online presentations; and created cybersecurity awareness videos for parents and kids in collaboration with other organizations which are available to the public. The chapter received the Bronze award for “Public Cybersecurity Awareness” at the Greek Cybersecurity Awards 2022.
- Latin America – Mexico City Chapter – This is one of the newest chapters, which launched at the beginning of the pandemic and overcame adversity at every turn. The chapter held multiple virtual educational member meetings, partnered with universities to help prepare students for a career in cyber security, and developed a partnership with schools, the National Guard and Police Departments to raise cybersecurity awareness for parents and kids.
- North America – New Jersey Chapter – The chapter took a creative approach to overcome the challenge of the pandemic and quickly adapted to virtual connection with members with monthly meetings, joint conferences with other organizations and even outdoor picnics. The chapter supported members and cyber security professionals by holding resume and personal branding/development workshops, certification bootcamps, mentorship programs, and partnering with multiple levels of schools including high school, college, and graduate. The efforts across the different chapter focus areas of connect, educate, inspire, and secure have had a global reach and impact.
(ISC)² would like to thank the Global Achievement Awards judging committees and the Chapter Advisory Council for their help in the selection process. A full list of awards committee members can be found at https://www.isc2.org/-/media/ISC2/About/Awards/GAA-Committee-2021-2022.ashx.
A special thanks to the members of the (ISC)² Board of Directors who judged the Board Awards, including Arthur Friedman, CISSP , Jill Slay, CISSP, James Packer, CISSP, CCSP, Eiji Kuwana, CISSP and Yiannis Pavlosoglou, CISSP.
For more information on the Global Achievement Awards program, including descriptions of each award category and eligibility details, please visit: https://www.isc2.org/About/Award-Programs.
About (ISC)²
(ISC)² is an international nonprofit membership association focused on inspiring a safe and secure cyber world. Best known for the acclaimed Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®) certification, (ISC)² offers a portfolio of credentials that are part of a holistic, pragmatic approach to security. Our membership, more than 168,000 strong, is made up of certified cyber, information, software and infrastructure security professionals who are making a difference and helping to advance the industry. Our vision is supported by our commitment to educate and reach the general public through our charitable foundation – The enter for Cyber Safety and Education™. For more information on (ISC)², visit www.isc2.org, follow us on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook and LinkedIn.
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