Top 100 Interview: Munawar Valiji

CISO, Trainline

Before joining Trainline in August 2020, Munawar Valiji was the Group CISO for UK grocery store Sainsbury’s where he built and delivered a comprehensive security program designed to enable the business. Before that, he served for three years as Head of Information Security at News UK.

How will you drive your organization’s cybersecurity strategy forward in 2021?

We have made phenomenal progress over the last six months, so we want to continue to build on what we have achieved. It is all about delivering a pragmatic customer-led strategy and making that impactful and engaging for all parts of the organization. Information security is very much a 'hearts and minds’ thing, so being able to just reinforce that engagement is really important. We are keeping our laser focus on trust and privacy through the customer experience. Delivering value is at the heart of it, absolutely, but also security maturity through measurable improvement.

How has the pandemic affected the cybersecurity posture in your organization?

Trainline is a digital-first organization and is very progressive when it comes to technology. As a result, we were already enabled for remote work, which we could embrace with little more disruption than an uptick in demand on our infrastructure network and services. So, for us, an important part was reinforcing the message about good online hygiene, and the need to be cyber aware. This allowed us to have even more productive outcomes from our colleagues across the organization.

Munawar Valiji is featured in our Top 100 Global Leaders in Information Security Report. Click here to read the full list.