Sithembile Songo

CISO, ESKOM

Sithembile Songo has been crowned as the Cyber leader of the year 2024 in Africa, CISO of the year 2024, one of the 20 influential women in Africa, Top 50 cyber professionals, Top 50 manufacturing leaders, Top 100 global women in cybersecurity, international speaker, Top 100 influential women, mentor and is serving as a member of the board and advisory board member. She holds a Master of Science in Information Security from the University of London. She has spoken at major local, national and global IT and cyber security conferences.

She has been specializing in information security for more than 20 years now and her experience is augmented by several executive leadership roles in both public and private sectors, including Financial, Telecom, Public Sector, Consulting firm, Energy sector and other State-owned entities.

Sithembile currently works as the Chief Information Security Officer, CISO, heading the information security pillar at the state-owned energy entity, which produce 95% of South Africa’s electricity. Her strategic role primarily focuses on protecting the national critical infrastructure from potential cyber-attacks, thus preventing a negative impact on the economy. She also enables secure business operations, including secure generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, which depend on operational technology (OT) that largely depends on secured computer networks and systems to produce electricity.