National Harbor, MD, Sept. 25, 2019 – The FAIR Institute, an expert, nonprofit organization led by information risk officers, CISOs and business executives to develop standard information, cybersecurity and operational risk management practices based on the Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) model, recognized three risk management leaders this week during its annual FAIR Conference (FAIRCON19) at National Harbor, MD.
The FAIR Institute congratulates 2019 Excellence Awards winners:
- Ian Amit, CSO at Cimpress, winner of the FAIR Business Innovator Award,
- Sharon Mudd, Risk Manager at Pearson Education, winner of the FAIR Champion Award
- Osama Salah, Founder of the UAE Chapter of the FAIR Institute in Abu Dhabi, winner of the FAIR Ambassador Award
The awards were announced and presented at the FAIR Conference this week at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
The FAIR Awards honor risk management leaders for their initiative, ingenuity and contributions to information/cyber security and operational risk management through their use and advocacy of FAIR, the international standard for quantifying risk in financial terms. The awards recognize the deep impact that these professionals have on their organizations in enabling operational excellence and effective decision-making and in balancing the need to protect their organizations while running the business.
“Ian, Sharon and Osama are industry leaders driving some of the most forward-looking advancements in risk management today,” FAIR Institute Chairman, Jack Jones said. “We are proud to honor their outstanding efforts to advance the practice of risk management through spreading understanding and adoption of the FAIR Standard.”
The FAIR Business Innovation Award recognizes cybersecurity and risk professionals who have successfully applied FAIR principles to drive innovation. Ian Amit has worked to bring FAIR to Cimpress, an organization made up of many independent business units scattered around the world. This has taken consistency, discipline and structure. Ian also evangelizes integrating FAIR with the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF), and NIST recently published a case study “Success Story” on its website detailing Ian’s efforts at combining FAIR and the CSF at Cimpress.
The other finalists for the 2019 Business Innovator Award are Musso Shaikh, Manager, Cyber Threat Intel at Fannie Mae and Emery Csulak, Deputy CIO & CISO at the U.S. Department of Energy.
The FAIR Champion Award recognizes leaders at the forefront of their organization’s FAIR initiative who persuade data owners to contribute to a new risk management process, stakeholders to help improve analysis, and decision-makers to adopt the analytics results. Sharon Mudd, Risk Manager at Pearson Education, has changed the discussion about risk at this global company, bringing risk analysis up from a purely technical exercise to a process that leads to decision-making based on the business impact of risk. Among other achievements, she completely rebuilt the Security Assurance process for new products and through countless training sessions, drop-ins and videos built a strong base of evangelists for FAIR and risk quantification at Pearson.
The other finalists for the 2019 FAIR Champion Award are Adam Curry, Security Manager at Caterpillar and Mary Faulkner, Director of Info Security at Thrivent Financial.
The FAIR Ambassador Award recognizes a FAIR Institute member for bringing FAIR and the Institute to a new part of the world. Osama Salah has brought FAIR to the Gulf States by starting the UAE Local Chapter in Abu Dhabi. As a frequent speaker at conferences in the region and a FAIR Institute blog contributor, Osama has expanded his reach to become the region's foremost FAIR expert. Osama has used FAIR at his company to comply with the UAE’s risk management standard, a qualitative standard improved by adding the quantification power of the FAIR model. He is constantly encouraging risk professionals to use the FAIR ontology and terminology to build up their understanding of risk.
The other finalists for the 2019 FAIR Ambassador Award are the Highmark Health Team, led by Brad Carvellas from Pittsburgh, PA and Denny Wan of Security Express from Sydney, Australia.
Past winners of FAIR Institute Excellence Awards include:
- Omar Khawaja, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Highmark Health - 2018 FAIR Business Innovator
- Jack Freund, Director, Cyber Risk, TIAA - 2018 FAIR Champion
- Jason Ha, Director of the Digital Trust Risk Assurance Practice at PwC Australia - 2018 FAIR Ambassador
- Roland Cloutier, Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer, ADP - 2017 FAIR Business Innovator
- David Sheronas, Vice President, Global Information Security at Bank of America - 2017 FAIR Champion
- Christopher Cooper,VP, Operational Risk, Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated - 2016 FAIR Business Innovator
- Joel Baese, InfoSec Governance & Risk Analysis Director, Walmart - 2016 FAIR Champion
About the FAIR Institute
The FAIR Institute is an expert, non-profit organization led by information risk officers, CISOs and business executives, created to develop and share standard information risk management practices based on Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR), the only international standard analytics model for information security and operational risk. FAIR helps organizations quantify and manage risk from the business perspective and enables cost-effective decision-making. Institute membership has now passed 6,000, nearly doubling in one year, and includes members from about 30% of Fortune 1000 companies. This year has seen record attendance at FAIRCON19 – follow news of the conference on Twitter at #FAIRCON19. To learn more and get involved visit: www.fairinstitute.org.
Contact:
Luke Bader
Director, Memberships and Programs
lbader@fairinstitute.org
484.885.4144
