Netskope has announced the appointment of Samantha MacLeod and Nicholas McKenzie as CxO Advisors in APAC. MacLeod and McKenzie are the first members of the Netskope board dedicated to the APAC region.
MacLeod has worked more than 20 years in the technology and security industry. She has driven a number of significant cyber security transformation programs, with a career spanning corporate security, technology, and security risk across Australia, Asia and the US. She was recently interim General Manager at the NBN in charge of Security Risk, Consulting, Privacy and Security Assurance. Previously, she was CISO successively at ME Bank and AGL Energy, and GE Capital’s Technology & Security Risk Solutions Director for APAC. MacLeod’s previous roles also include IT and security responsibilities at NAB, GE Money and Oracle.
MacLeod is a Fellow of the Australian Information Security Association, and received the AISA Cyber Security Award for Enterprise Cyber Security Team of the Year in 2018, for her work establishing the cyber security function at AGL. She has also contributed as a Security Industry Advisor to Cyrise, AEMO and Deakin University, and is a strong advocate for women in technology and cyber security. In parallel with her role with Netskope, she will continue operating as an independent cyber security consultant.
Nicholas McKenzie has been a cyber security professional for more than 20 years, and in parallel with his role as CxO Board advisor, is the Chief Information and Security Officer at Bugcrowd, the global leader in crowdsourced security that orchestrates data, technology, and human intelligence to expose security gaps with products like Bug Bounties, Penetration Testing-as-a-service, and more. In a journey that started in Australia and took him to the UK and Singapore, he has held major security leadership and senior roles, mainly in the financial industry. His previous roles include CISO / CSO at NAB, Global Head and Managing Director for Technology, Information Security and Operational Risk at Standard Chartered Bank, APAC’s IT Risk and Security Management Executive Director at JP Morgan, and additional responsibilities at the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.
McKenzie has also held advisory board CISO member roles for Google, Amazon Web Services, La Trobe University and Digital Shadows, and is Chair of the Advisory Board for Red Piranha. He is also a Limited Partner and Advisor for SixThirty, a venture capital fund investing in cyber security start-ups globally.
Commenting on the appointment, McKenzie outlined that “cyber security is a team effort. The more cyber security companies and professionals collaborate with one another, the more we will achieve cyber resilience among organisations.” He considers, “A board advisory role for Netskope as an opportunity to embrace this philosophy. Using my industry knowledge and global network, I’m aiming to help more APAC executives and organisations with advice and guidance, and, as a Netskope user myself, help them understand how the solutions better enable security transformations.”
MacLeod commented, “Many organisations, especially SMEs, continue to be challenged by cyber security problems in APAC. This advisory role is an opportunity for me to share knowledge with more executives, and help strengthen cyber risk management practices across more organisations, including through advocacy of Netskope’s platform. In doing so, I hope to create more opportunities for Netskope to help customers automate the protection of their data and improve their overall understanding of complex security challenges.”
David Fairman, CIO and CSO for APAC at Netskope, is leading the CxO program in the region. He comments, “Samantha and Nicholas are two of the most experienced cyber security professionals in our region, and I couldn’t have hoped for better leaders to join us and kick off our CxO advisory team in APAC. They recognise the importance of collaboration in our industry to help the world keep pace with cyber threat actors, and this is precisely the philosophy behind the creation of our CxO teams across the globe. Samantha and Nicholas bring diverse and unique sets of knowledge, and have experience driving major security transformations involving complex conversations with executives and boards. These are rare skills that our customers and teams will be able to tap, and I thank them for their involvement.”
