Enters role with more than 25 years’ experience working in IT- and security-related positions.
Operational technology (OT) cyber security firm Secolve has appointed Gijo Varghese as its chief security officer to help the business meet customer demand for resilience.
Secolve was founded in 2020 and is a mission-critical data and systems advisor for mines, factories, hospitals, transport networks, energy and other industrial ecosystems, providing OT-focused cyber advisory, offensive security, and cyber training services.
As the firm’s first CSO, Varghese will lead Secolve’s consultancy and professional services experts to provide security best practices and compliance to critical infrastructure providers.
He enters the role with over 25 years of experience in IT- and cyber security-related positions at several organisations, working most recently at Endeavour Energy as cyber resilience leadership for the last six years.
Prior to this, he worked at CyberCX and Wipro, as well as security-focused roles at SA Health and Transport for NSW.
“With his deep industry experience, Gijo knows how to communicate OT cyber security risks and best practices to executive, engineering and OT teams,” said Secolve CEO Laith Shahin.
“We are already among the frontrunners in Australian OT cyber, but Gijo will ensure we continue to meet the demands required by the Australian critical infrastructure sector.”
Varghese added that he enters the role as Australia enters a “volatile new era” when it comes to OT.
“As IT and OT systems hyper-converge, the attack surface is expanding just as the market prepares for massive growth,” he said. “For these organisations, downtime isn’t an option – yet they remain prime targets.
“Whether it’s a nation-state actor or a criminal gang, the goal is the same. We know the dire consequences if a hospital, port, or power plant is taken offline; it’s not just a data breach, it’s a threat to public safety.”
Original article on ARN can be found here.