The Security division of NTT Ltd., the world-leading global technology services provider, have announced the winners of its inaugural Women in Cybersecurity Awards for Northern Europe (UK, Benelux and Nordics).
At a packed-out awards ceremony held at London’s IET last night the winners were announced as Saher Naumann, a Threat Intelligence Analyst at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence (Newcomer of the Year) and Carolyn Ngiam, Director of Barclays Security Programme (Professional of the Year). They were presented with their prizes by cybersecurity thought leader and former CISO at HSBC, Dr Alison Vincent.
“According to the latest figures from (ISC)2 just 24% of women are employed in cybersecurity, signalling a huge gap and highlighting the work we have to do as an industry to address this failing in diversity. The ‘Women In Cybersecurity Awards’, developed in partnership with Global Digital Women (GDW), aims to recognise and promote the essential voices of women in cybersecurity across Europe. The response has been overwhelming both in terms of the number and high calibre of applications we have received for each award category,” said Azeem Aleem, Vice President of Security Consulting, NTT Ltd.
“Our judging panel faced a tough task to identify the winners and our congratulations go not only to Saher Naumann and Carolyn Ngiam on their success and but also to all of our finalists – who by participating are supporting our continuing efforts to change the perception of women in the industry as well as inspiring young women to consider a career in our sector.”
Applications were open to female cybersecurity experts who could nominate themselves and others in two categories: ‘Newcomer’, for women who have been working in the cybersecurity sector for under five years or who have recently completed a cybersecurity-based degree and ‘Professional’ for women who have been managing a cybersecurity team or been involved with the industry for five or more years.
There were three finalists in each category who were shortlisted by a judging panel that included representatives from RSA Security, De La Rue, NTT Ltd and NTT Data:
Newcomer: Saher Naumaan – Threat Intelligence Analyst @BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, Felisha Mouchous – Security Analyst @Bank of England and Chelsea Jarvie, Cyber Security Consultant @CJ Cyber Ltd
Professional: Carolyn Ngiam – Director of Barclays Security Program @Barclays, Annabel Jamieson, Security Manager @Accenture and Gil Baram, Head of Research @Yuval Ne’eman workshop for science, technology and security at Tel Aviv University
“We are delighted at the success of our very first Women in Cybersecurity Awards and look forward to building upon this in 2020 as part of our efforts to encourage greater diversity in our industry,” adds Azeem Aleem.