Gasbene Mahlangu will be presenting at the CISO Africa 2020 event. Find out more about him below.
Corinium Global Intelligence: To kick off, please tell us a bit more about your career, from tertiary studies to your current. This can be a brief history – what is often interesting to note is the fluidity of career paths.
Gasbene Mahlangu: After completing undergraduate in Internal Audit, I joined Standard Bank as a Branch Teller. I was privileged to fulfill almost all the roles in the branch within my first three years, these include Inquiries, Account Support, Prestige Consultant, etc. In 2010 I was offered an opportunity to be part of the SAP Core banking Journey. I then completed Project Management courses, as well as SAP Overview, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer and Post Graduate in Risk management. In 2014, I was appointed as risk at PBB SA IT level. 2017 I was appointed by Group IT Security to define and enable their Strategy. Early this year, 2019, I was then appointed as Group Risk, Business Resilience for Corporate Functions, including Group IT, to assist in shaping a disruption enduring organisation.
Corinium: When you were 10 years old, what did you imagine your job would be when you were all grown? Is this in anyway reflected at all in your current role?
Gasbene: I was fascinated by lawyers and accountants. I saw myself being one of them. I liked how they dressed whenever I saw them on TV, suits and ties while dragging trolley bags. LOL. I guess these were the opportunities we were exposed to when growing up.
Corinium: What do you think the 10-year-old kids of today are imagining their careers will be in 20 years’ time? What do you think the jobs of the future will look like?
Gasbene: Wow, TECHNOLOGY, that’s probably all they think about right now, imagine in 20 years. However, I do think 10-year-olds are more creative and exposed to the greater world than we were and this is mostly due to technology and their nature of being inquisitive. In 20 years, our kids would have disrupted the way we see and operate the businesses today. The 4th industrial revolution would be extremely advanced.
Corinium: A work-related question: with regards to IT security (or indeed your specific role in the business), what are your main day-to-day challenges? In addition, what do you see as macro challenges to business as a whole with regards to protecting assets, data, customers, reputation etc.
Gasbene: Transformation, in a form of how we conduct business. How do we ensure that our organisation is agile and resilient. How do we shift our mind from old ways of working and ensure that we enhance current control by form of reviewing current policies, standards and setting ourselves for success. How do we then ensure that we are ready for any organisational disruption that might impact us. Our organisation has so much history. we need to ensure that in the next 100 years the organisation is still relevant and adaptive to the rapidly changing world.
Corinium: Are we becoming more secure over time, or are we merely keeping toe-to-toe with the growing external (and internal) threat landscape?
Gasbene: Right now, it’s the survival of the fittest. One might say the hackers/disrupters have a school of thought, ideas are being shared on how to disrupt these organisations, I believe we have positioned ourselves well by also creating a knowledge sharing environment amongst our peers to ensure that we are prepared for these malwares, etc, that disrupt us daily. So yes, we are becoming more secure over time
Corinium: And finally, for a bit of fun, which three historical (or pop culture) figures would you like to have dinner with, and why?
Gasbene: Gilan Gork- he is a mentalist and displays the power of influence. People are comfortable with the old ways of working and don’t do well with change. With the ever-changing environment it is quite important to be fluid (agile if you may). To sell this idea to the people captured by the old ways of doing things and are afraid of change, the power of influence might come in handy.
To learn more on the subject of Security, join Gasbene Mahlangu at the CISO Africa 2020 at the Maslow Hotel, Sandton on the 18-20 September 2020. Click here to register