Dr. Sherif Hashem is the new Chair of FIRST, and four new members join the Board of Directors

July, 20^th 2022 – Dr. Hashem is an Information Sciences and Technology Professor at George Mason University (GMU), researching cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cyber policies and strategies, and information security management. He is a member of the African Union's Cybersecurity Expert Group (AUCSEG), a Senior IEEE member, and an ISACA Certified Information Security Manager (CISM).

Over the past two decades, Dr. Hashem has led several national critical cybersecurity efforts in Egypt; delivered many keynote speeches for international organizations, including the UN, ITU, Interpol, NATO, OSCE, OECD, African Union, the League of Arab States, the US Department of Defense, and US Department of State; and, was a part of the United Nations Group of Government Experts (UN GGE) on the Developments In The Field Of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security.

On being appointed the new FIRST Chair, Dr. Hashem said: "I am deeply honored to be elected as the new Chair of FIRST's Board of Directors. It is a great privilege and responsibility to work with my distinguished colleagues on the board and with FIRST's competent officers and staff to support further and empower the global security and incident response community. Last June marked a new milestone for FIRST. We reached over 620 member teams from 100 countries, with 1000 participants in the annual conference from 87 countries. This continuous growth in the membership and diversity of FIRST's activities and outreach demonstrates the resilience and agility of FIRST and its members, even during the challenges of a global pandemic. I look forward to contributing to FIRST's continuous growth and advancement."

Four new additions to the FIRST Board of Directors

Four new FIRST board members were also elected – Désirée Sacher-Boldewin (Liaison), Olivier Caleff (Liaison), Trey Darley (Accenture), and Audrey Mnisi (Ghana Association of Banks - CERT/GH). Each member brings a wealth of expertise and knowledge, not to mention a global reach, to help FIRST work towards keeping the internet safe.

The new members join FIRST's existing Board, Tracy Bills (CERT/CC), Serge Droz (Liaison), who will serve a further two years on the board, Michael Hausding (SWITCH CERT), and FIRST CFO, Mona Elisabeth Østvang (mnemonic IRT), Yukako Uchida (JPCERT/CC).

Olivier Caleff – Cyber Resilience and Cyber Crisis Director
Olivier Caleff is based in France and works for ERIUM. Olivier started working with firewalls in the early 1990s at APOGEE Communications and then held various CSIRT positions, including CERT-FR Representative. He currently assists CSIRTs on SIM3 maturity-related topics. He has been an active member of FIRST since 2013 and participates in several of the organization's activities such as training, the Membership Committee, and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) such as CSIRT Framework, TLP, Malware Analysis, Cyber Exercises, and DNS Abuse SIGs.

Trey Darley – Security Senior Manager, Cyber Resilience Lead for Belgium and Luxembourg
With over 25 years of IT experience, about 15 years in infosec, and a lengthy stint at the Belgian national CERT (CCB/CERT.be), Trey is now working with clients to help them increase their resilience, lower their risk exposure, and do crisis management better. You may also know Trey from his many years of leading the STIX/TAXII cyber threat intelligence standardization efforts under the auspices of the OASIS CTI TC, which he co-chairs. He's been involved with FIRST since joining initially as a liaison back in 2016 and is passionately supportive of FIRST's international capacity-building efforts.

Audrey Mnisi Mireku – CISRO, Ghana Association of Banks
Audrey Mnisi Mireku is a Chief Information Security Risk Officer at the Ghana Association of Banks (GAB). She leads and coordinates engagements on Information security, compliance, fraud prevention, and information sharing in the banking sector. Her engagements include member banks, industry regulators, the media, law enforcement, and policymakers. In 2019, Audrey led the National CERT of Ghana to join FIRST.

Desiree Sacher-Boldewin – Lead Security Architect, Finanz Informatik GmbH & Co. KG
Desiree Sacher-Boldewin is the Lead Security Architect for Finanz Informatik in Germany. Desiree has over 15 years of experience in the IT security and incident response industry achieved through many security operational roles. She has learned about the risks and threats in the industry through much first-hand experience. Daily, she defines processes and structures to improve operational IT security tasks. She writes papers with taxonomies that illustrate and document operational security problems in her leisure time.

Chris Gibson, FIRST CEO, said, "I am extremely happy with how FIRST's membership has grown year on year, which is testament to the hard work of the previous board, especially in difficult times with minimal face-to-face meetings and which culminated in a hugely successful conference in Dublin. I look forward to working with the new Board of Directors, which is our most diverse yet in terms of gender and includes a further board member from Africa."

Alexander Jager, Javier Berciano, and Shawn Richardson departed the board this year. FIRST is very grateful for their contribution.

A complete list of Board members can be found here.

Also available in PDF

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About FIRST

FIRST aspires to bring together incident response and security teams from every country across the world to ensure a safe internet for all. Founded in 1990, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) consists of internet emergency response teams from over 600 corporations, government bodies, universities and other institutions across 100 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania.

For more information, visit: https://www.first.org.

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