Still in the mood of celebrating International Women’s Day in the month of March and appreciating the African women in the tech space, we have come up with a list of the top African women in Cybersecurity.
Sherifat Akinwonmi (Nigeria)
Sherifat is a Cyber Security Specialist at United Farmers of Alberta Co-operative Ltd.
She is Information security (Cyber Security) professional with diverse work experience and skills which cuts across both the Pharmaceuticals, Financial and IT services industries.
Sherifat has several professional qualifications in Information Technology and Security including Certified Chief Information Security Officer (CCISO), CISSP, ISO 27001 LA, CISM, CISA, PRINCE2 and ITIL.
She was at Stanbic IBTC Bank for five years, where she worked as an IT Risk Information Security Specialist.
She then moved on to Interswitch where she was the Unit Head, Information Security for two years.
Her cybersecurity journey also led her to GSK, where she acted as the Information Technology Manager responsible for technology services delivery and information security requirements for Nigeria, South Africa and Mauritius.
She is presently a member of the board of advisors; Canadian Women in Cybersecurity.
Abeer Khedr (Egypt)
Abeer is the Director of Information Security at the National Bank of Egypt.
She has led multiple projects in Egypt’s telecom, banking and industrial sectors in areas of information security management systems implementation, information security strategy design, policy design and implementation, security risk management and standards compliance.
Some of her other Additional project types include design and delivery of security awareness as well as security assessments and IT audits.
She has extensive experience in security regulations and standards implementations including and central bank regulations.
Her continuous value for learning in the cybersecurity space has driven her to be certified as Chief information security officer (C|CISO), certified Data Protection Officer (DPO), information security manager (CISM), information systems auditor (CISA) with additional certification in risk and controls (CRISC) and governance of enterprise IT (CGEIT)
Some of her awards in cybersecurity include:
- Women Security Leader at the Middle East Security Awards conference (2016)
- CISO of the year at the Cairo Security Camp (2016)
- Leading cybersecurity executive (2018)
- Arab CISO of the year at the Arab Security Conference in (2018)
- Top cybersecurity government leaders in the Middle East in 2019
For 6 years, she was Senior Manager at CA and Security Services. Abeer has over 20 years of experience in information security and IT consulting experience.
Also read, Meet 5 African Tech Women in Data Analytics
Esther Lugoe Mengi (Tanzania)
Esther is the Founder, Lead Cybersecurity Specialist and Digital Forensic Expert at Serensic Ltd with specialties in technical and data analytics.
She has a degree in Information Systems and technology with certifications in CCNA, CISA, CEH and currently pursuing CFIP.
Esther was once the System Security Administrator at Carina Ltd for four years.
She was named one of the top 100 women in Cybersecurity in Africa and she is a member of ISACA Chapter Tanzania.
Esther is also an innovator and product developer, she has developed and commercialized a lot of systems and applications.
Christi Maherry (South Africa)
Christi is a technology entrepreneur and a transformational leader in the technology industry.
She has demonstrated her passion for both business growth and security in South Africa.
She was a Counter Intelligence Agent at National Intelligence Service for 9 years and an Executive Application Security at NamlTech for 4 years in the same country.
She founded LAWtrust is a specialist, application security, solutions provider that builds trust in information systems through establishing authenticity, accountability and privacy in data message.
The primary focus of LAWtrust is to apply digital signatures and positive identity to business processes, thereby creating time and money efficiencies and reducing risk.
Since 2006, LAWtruct has grown from a startup to SouthAfrica’s dominant player in the identity and integrity security sector. She has more than 20 years of experience in the cybersecurity sector.
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