COVER STORY
nd-user
CI
SO
CISOs at modern enterprises
face more challenges than ever
before as they work against
a backdrop of ever-evolving
cyberthreats. Jaya Baloo, CISO
at Netherlands-based KPN
Telecom, is uniquely placed
to offer end user insight into
the challenges faced by global
security professionals and what
the future threatscape looks like.
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Issue 07
KP
N
Tele
com
INSPIRING THE NEW
GENERATION OF CISOS
D
riven by a desire to
understand the difference
between mistakes
in programming and
intentional malicious behaviour after
receiving a computer for Christmas at the
age of nine, Jaya Baloo admits that her
interest in cybersecurity started young.
Fast forward a little and you’ll now find
Baloo listed as a top 100 CISO and a
regular guest speaker at the world’s
highest-profile cybersecurity events –
often speaking about quantum computing,
a topic about which she is keen to raise
global awareness.
www.intelligentciso.com
of
people who actually understand what
they need to do versus just buying into
every single vendor pitch,” she said.
“There is an overload of security
vendor pitches at the moment because
information security, maybe for the
last two or three years, has been seen
as ‘hot’ and I think that brings about
a ‘market for lemons’ with the general
population not being able to understand
what quality is and that is a concern.”
On cyberthreats to the
telecommunications sector
Changes in the
cybersecurity sector The ‘goal’ of attackers is what sets
telecommunications infrastructure apart
from other critical infrastructure, she says.
Over two decades in the industry, Baloo
has been privy to several changes, most
notably that she no longer needs to
convince anyone of the importance of
good cybersecurity practice. “The target setting for state-sponsored
attackers is not to bring it down so
much as to be hooked into crevices
and intercept traffic without being
discovered,” she said.
“What I do still find, however, is that
there’s an ocean of distance between “That’s not the same for other critical
infrastructure providers. Energy
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