Keep walking: BoD 2023-2025

Before presenting the new BoD, we have to acknowledge the hard, dilligent work all past BoD members have already put in. Hip hip hooray, for all past BoD Members (sorted alphabetically by surname): George Aslanidis , Alexandros Belsis MSc IT Security, CISSP, CCSP, Prince2, ITIL Thanassis Diogos , Nikos Feidopiastis , Dimitris Georgiou , John ILIADIS , Nikos Karamesinis , Andreas Koidis , Yiannis Koukoùras , Argyris Makrygeorgou , Stathis Mavrovouniotis , Kostas Papadatos , Dimitrios Patsos , Panagiotis Soulos , Panagiotis Trimintzios and Lefteris Tzelepis .

ISC2 Hellenic Chapter wouldn’t be a multi-award-winning Chapter without your multi-year commitment, amazing contributions and extraordinary leadership!

Let’s have a look at who the new BoD Members are and what is it we intend to do with the mandate we got at the February 2023 General Assembly and BoD elections.

Dimitris Georgiou proceeds with another 2-year term, having already digitally transformed Chapter processes related to Treasury, having participated in numerous Security Awareness trainings delivered in Greece, having secured multiple awards on that domain for the Chapter, and having contributed to the thought leadership activities offered locally by (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter. Success brings along increased expectations! We welcome him for another term as a Board Member and Treasurer.

Dimitris has more than 20 years of experience in the IT and Cybersecurity industry, is the founder and Chief Security Officer of Alphabit, holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and the CISSP, CPFA, CPSP certifications in Information Security, Digital Forensics and Payment Security respectively.?He is a member of professional associations like BCS IEEE ACM and ISC2, and utilises his skills in advising organisations and businesses how to manage regulatory requirements in an manner that effectively reduces the Cyber risks they face; in the recent years he has been actively involved as a digital forensics analyst and is a registered court forensic expert witness. In his spare time he volunteers for good causes, while also speaking and writing about the risks faced by digital citizens and particularly caring for the safety of children online.

George Aslanidis proceeds with another 2-year term, his fourth one since 2015 all in all, having trained, himself, many tens of people within Greece towards their “gold-standard” CISSP certification and having performed outstandingly the duties of Training Officer for many years, guiding and leading Greek certified instructors offering local (ISC)2 training. He’s been there, done it and got the t-shirt! This time around, he has chosen to deal with Marketing, increasing our ties with the market, coordinating our relations with our Sponsors and ensuring we give back to the community by delivering thought leadership in the best conferences out there. We welcome him for another term as a Board Member and Marketing Officer.

George has more than thirty years professional experience in multiple IT fields as well as in management of large-scale IT projects. He has a rich mix of Information Security field-work experience including security policy development, compliance with regulations & best practices, risk assessment methodologies, business continuity and disaster recovery planning, security architectures design as well as implementation of specialized IT security technologies in complex and demanding financial environments. Within his career he held various managerial positions in multinational and Greek financial institutions including the Manager of IT Infrastructure & Information Security for a Greek Investment Bank. Additionally, he is certified CISSP trainer as well as certified TUV DPO Executive.

Konstantina Syntila has just joined the BoD and she is determined to further streamline the operation of the Chapter, align BoD actions towards serving even better our Strategic Action Plan, and help pave the way towards even greener pastures! We welcome her as a Board Member and Secretary.

Dina is the Cisco Cyber Security Sales Specialist Leader for Cisco Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta. She is responsible for the Cisco Security Products and Solutions and she joined Cisco in 2007. She has experience of 22 years in the IT industry. She worked as a Presales Consultant Architect with all Service Providers in Greece, Cyprus and Malta and was part of various Cisco teams in South and Eastern Europe. She has experience with Service Provider Networking, Enterprise Networking Technologies and Cisco Security Solutions. She holds a BSc and MSc in Computer Science and Telecommunications from Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of UOA. She also holds an MBA from AUEB and CISSP certification.

Maria Mouriki has just joined the BoD. Her arrival marks the passing of our Membership base from 2xx to 300 persons, this is why she has pledged to increase the number of our ultra-active Members in good standing even further! She will be making sure all our Member automagically get the CPEs they are entitled to, based on the events they attend and the volunteer work they perform. She will also make sure that our actions will be directed towards benefiting our community of 300 engaged cybersecurity professionals. We welcome her as a Board Member and Membership Chair.

Maria is a senior cyber security professional with over twenty years of experience mainly within the Financial Services Sector and expertise mainly in information security management, governance, risk and incident management. She is a member of the cybersecurity community with strong academic foundation (BSc in Computer Science, MSc in Information Systems) and considerable professional certifications (CISSP, CISM, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, ISO 27005 Risk Manager). Her goal and personal vision is to serve the cybersecurity community and promote the value of continuous development.?

Spiros Kyriacopoulos has just joined the BoD, undertaking the role of Events Officer. He will ensure that we will be organizing memorable Events our Members. He will be keeping our Members updated on the latest professional trends, providing opportunities for our Members to create professional alliances and advance the profession, while having fun at the same time! Finally, he will turn the dial of event attendance up. Currently the event attendance dial reads “Ultra High”; Spiros will turn it up to “Ridiculously High” ?? Did you like our events so far? Just wait till you see the next ones! We welcome him as a Board Member and Events Officer.

Spiros is an experienced Information Security Presales and IT Systems Architect both in the cloud and on-prem environments, with a demonstrated history of working as an Information Technology Operations and Project Manager in the banking industry. He possesses Strong IT multinational professional experience, while he is also skilled in Information Security and the ISO 27001.?In addition, he is experienced in the ITIL Framework and ISO 20000, as well as the ISO 22301 business continuity management. In recent years, he has been a member of the organizing committee and Masters of Ceremony of the OpenConf community (voluntarily participating in the organization of large scale tech conferences in Athens, with topics related to technology and information security, as well as actively participating in the activities of the (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter.

Dimitris Manolis has just joined the BoD and he is eager to take up the role of Training Officer. We have already been awarded prizes multiple times for the training and security awareness we offer in the region. Can we do security awareness even better? Well, Dimitris has been very active in the field with us, even before joining the BoD, so the answer is “Yes we can”! He will further streamline the professional training we offer (towards advanced certifications) and further develop our cybersecurity awareness actions, offered for free to the community in the region. We welcome him as a Board Member and Training Officer.

Dimitris is?a seasoned technology professional holding leader positions the IT industry for 20+ years. He is specializing in Cyber Security, and prior joining Cocal Cola Hellenic, he was holding leader positions in other multinational corporations mainly under the IKEA brand. He is an active member of the Security professionals community,?having as an?ultimate goal to further establish the profession within Greece and abrοad.

Nikos Damoulianos has just joined the BoD but he is a very old volunteer of the Chapter. He has been supporting the Communications function all along and has been Chapter’s ghost-writer for many years. He will contribute a great deal towards increasing the levels and quality of Communication to our Members and to the Community, leading the Chapter to even tighter relations with all stakeholders. Is there something you feel we must share with all 300 Members, which we missed ourselves? Tell Nikos! We welcome him as an Alternate Board Member and Communications Officer.

Nikos works in the Information Security Sector for the past 5.5 years and his experience is focused mostly in Threat Modeling. He is an active member of the community of Information Security professionals the last 4 years, offering his services on matters concerning the chapter's website.?

Nikos V. has just joined the BoD, undertaking the role of Volunteer Officer. He is an experienced professional who will be instrumental in rallying up our troops of Volunteers and provide an ultra-beneficial and gratifying volunteering experience. Are you considering to be part of the largest local, most influential group of cybersecurity professionals, forming high-caliber teams and giving back to the regional community a small part of our joint, distilled experience? Volunteer now, before Nikos closes up shop; do note that he is using an old application version to record Volunteers, which can take only up to 65K rows; there’s still time to volunteer, but not much ???We welcome him as an Alternate Board Member and Volunteer Officer.

Nikos is a professional in the IT sector the last 23 years; he is working mainly on digital transformation projects, focusing, among others, on security concerns. He possesses the certifications PMP, Prince2 Practitioner, ITIL 4 Managing Professional, Scrum Master I as well as Certified in Cybersecurity and ISO 20000 Lead Auditor. His main interests lie in the area of new and disruptive technologies and the added value they can offer to companies as well to the society, keeping always an eye on the information security.?

Dr. John ILIADIS was a member of the previous BoD (2021-2023). For his role during this past 2-year BoD term, he went out of his comfort zone completely and tried his luck at Marketing & Communications. He is excited with the marketing goals previous BoD Members helped him achieve and with the marketing experience he gained. He is honoured to have been elected President for the term 2023-2025 and will continue to practice servant leadership in this Board too, trying his best to take the Chapter even higher than before! We welcome him as President of the Board.

John is an accomplished professional with 20 years of experience in enabling cyber-resilient services for thousands of users, spearheading digital infrastructure operations and delivering complex changes. His proven professional track record has been diverse; conducting basic and applied research on Information Security, developing commercially used digital signatures software, system & network administration of financial IT infrastructures, consulting on data privacy issues, designing security architectures, performing information risk management, demonstrating thought leadership in the digital trust space. During the last 10 years he is honoured to lead teams that run IT & CyberSecurity Operations, design CyberSecurity and Data Privacy controls and perform paradigm shifts of IT infrastructures, ensuring that business goals are achieved on time, on budget and on quality. His published research work includes more than 20 international papers, cited more than 300 times. He is a Chartered Manager who maintains several certifications, among which the CISSP.?

The constant, substantial contribution of all Chapter BoD Members mentioned in this article was a sufficient condition for (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter to be formed in 2015 and grow to unforeseen size and importance by 2023.

However, none of this would have happened without the necessary condition being there, i.e. the global (ISC)2 contribution to all Chapters’ success, with too many professionals to mention all of them in just a few pages. They are the ones who made sure the right global conditions were there for (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter (as well as other Chapters globally) to grow and flourish, no matter what adverse circumstances we had to face.

Jon France CISSP, ChCSP , Tara Wisniewski and Clar Rosso thank you for honouring us with your presence in some of our recent events, inspiring us with your input and celebrating our regional success towards advancing the profession and increasing public cybersecurity awareness. Also, a big thanks to all three of you for pushing us to do more; there's always room for improvement!

Natasha Karelina , well, what can we say. Whenever we need to interface with ISC2 you have been a hyper-efficient and hyper-effective one-stop-shop for us! We should probably consider creating a named, permanent Board of Directors seat just for you! Cheers!

Ariana Portillo, MPA Megan Gagnon and Chris Pipes, SCA, PSM, MCSA thanks for the guidance! (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter wouldn’t also be a very successful Official Training Provider (OTP) without your assistance!

Last, but not least, Yiannis Pavlosoglou , the Chairperson of (ISC)2. You have joined some of our recent Chapter events and you ‘ve already provided super-useful guidance! It means a lot for us, and we thank you very much for having given us the chance to pick your brain; your vast experience in the field is much appreciated!

We could go on and on, thanking many tens of people who have been there for (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter, both globally and regionally, but this is probably not the place for it. You know who you are and we won’t forget to keep thanking you, every chance we get.

Using many techniques (5 Whys, Delphi etc), we have been thinking long and hard about the reasons, the root causes for (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter’s sustained levels of success. We are Greeks after all, so we tend to philosophize a lot ??

Each and every time, we ‘ve reached the same conclusion. The secret sauce of success: our Members; they are just priceless!?They are the ones who demand more and more from (ISC)2 Hellenic Chapter, they are the ones who enjoy and benefit from our services, and they are the ones who help us stay the course towards delivering even more. They are the ones volunteering their time in order to achieve the impossible, both locally and globally.

So, here’s a big shout-out to our precious Members, all 300 of them!