This year marks the first ever (ISC)² EMEA Information Security Leadership Awards (ISLA), a chance for our community to recognise fellow information security and management professionals going the extra mile to enhance security across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Overall, we received a staggering number of impressive submissions, over 200, and these were shortlisted down to our finalists by our judges, members of the Europe, Middle East and Africa Advisory Council (EAC) . Winners will be announced at our Secure Summit UK on 12 December 2017. In the meantime, we will be sharing their stories on the blog. Here is the fourth installment:

André Koenegras, Security Consultant at Motiv ICT Security (Netherlands)

André is currently working towards gaining his CISSP certification and has previously studied IT Media Production at Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam, in addition to holding a range of qualifications including the Cisco Certified Network Professional Security (CCNP Security) and EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker (CEHv9). Presently, André is a Security Consultant at Motiv ICT Security, but before that he held IT positions at Shell, Holland America Line and Hyva.

In his current role, he worked on a project that involved renewing the centralized IT Security infrastructure of the Dutch Police. This entailed increasing the use of mobile devices used by police officers and the secure disclosure of their primary information; which led to challenges such as providing connectivity for 30,000 smartphones with a growing number of apps.  Through this valuable work, André’s contributions, it has been said that he has helped in making officers’ lives easier and ultimately played a part in the Netherlands being a safer place. During his work, he has been hailed as indispensable and a crucial team player, due to his ability to oversee complex infrastructure and problems, considering business needs and bringing the right people together to get the job done.

As a result, using the Security Infrastructure as partly realized by André, the road safety in the Netherlands has approved. His ability to listen, correlate, ask specifics and oversee complex problems has been regarded as unique, and in turn, led to his impressive and successful nomination.