Cybersecurity transformation in telecoms. IN ASSOCIATION WITH
CIRCLES.LIFE
DIGITAL REPORT 2021
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Cybersecurity transformation in telecoms.
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CIRCLES.LIFE
Mohamed Noordin Yussuff Marican, CISO at Circles.Life discusses the company ’s cybersecurity transformation and the impact of COVID-19
W
hen it comes to cybersecurity, Mohamed Noordin Yusuff Marican, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Circles.Life has
been hooked on the concept since he was a teenager. “It wasn’t even called cybersecurity back then, it was 04
known as data security, IT security and information security. It wasn’t until more recently that the phrase cybersecurity came in,” reflects Noordin, who adds that “with internet laws being less stringent back in the 90s,” he spent his time as a teenager on his first computers fiddling with security tools such as password crackers and backdoor trojans. “Knowing that this was the career journey I wanted to take, my career began as a police officer, in the police technology department, in the IT security team. I was responsible for protecting information assets, belonging to the Singapore police force.” After five years in the police force, Noordin moved to the private sector, working at industry leading companies such as EY, Barclays, Qatar Petroleum, KPMG and NTUC Enterprise, before joining Circles.Life.
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“Joining Circles.Life has definitely allowed me to grow my abilities to become a senior leader and have conversations with founders and C-levels. Circles.Life is already and will be even more successful than it already is in time to come. The first rule of success is to have a clear vision and that is what Circles.Life has. If you don’t have a goal of what you want to achieve, you end up drifting around and never ending up anywhere. Circles. Life’s core vision is to give power back to 06
the consumers,” comments Noordin. By nature, Noordin explains that he is a builder. “I have built cybersecurity teams in the past, but Circles.Life has given me the runway to build an information security office from ground zero, which I will be doing for many more years to come.”
INSIDE CIRCLES.LIFE “Founded on the belief that telcos can – and should – be better. Our vision is to be the go to customer brand that delights and engages customers with personalised digital services across the world,” details Noordin. With its pledge to give power to people that echoes throughout
“ I believe that Circles.Life will be a very successful company. The first rule of success is to have a clear vision and that is what Circles.Life has” — Mohamed Noordin Yusuff Marican, CISO, Circles.Life
EX E C U T I V E P R O FILE :
Yusuff Marican Title: CISO
Industry: Telecommunications
07 Location: Singapore
Md Noordin is Global Chief Information Security Officer with Circles.Life, Asia’s First Fully Digital Telco and Consumer Company. Noordin is responsible for building and maintaining the information security program and transforming the cybersecurity culture in the organisation globally. Having worked in the government, MNCs, SMEs and start-ups, he has accumulated more than 19 years of experience in Cybersecurity, IT Audit, Risk Management, Compliance, Investigation and Forensics. He is also an adjunct lecturer for cybersecurity with various educational institutes, a board committee member on corporate governance for a non-profit organisation in Singapore and a co-founder of a phishing simulation startup. Noordin holds a Master of Internet Security Management, coupled with CFE, CFI, CISSP, CISA, CISM and Prince2 certifications, and recently graduated in an Executive Leadership Programme with the University of Oxford. www.c i rc l e s . lif e/ s g
“ I have built cybersecurity teams in the past, but Circles.Life has given me the runway to build an information security office from ground zero, which I will be doing for many more years to come” — Mohamed Noordin Yusuff Marican, CISO, Circles.Life
its internal operations, Circles.Life strives to not only be the best digital telco app, but to also provide many different consumer verticals such as movie tickets, concert tickets and classes in a high quality and flexible way for its customers. Bringing the conversation back to security, Noordin explains that Circles. Life’s information security program has what the company calls its three ‘CISO pillars of cybersecurity’. “These pillars are made up of Cyber Defense, Cyber Governance and Cyber Operations functions. Our Cyber Defense function focuses on the likes of technical pene- tration testing, to ensure that vulnerabilities are discovered and remediated timely while our cyber governance function focuses on policies and procedures to make sure that we have the necessary cybersecurity frameworks in place and that we are complying with current cybersecurity and data protection regulations. Finally, our cyber operations function protects and defends our infrastructure against cyber threats.” With this structure in place, Noordin adds that the next element of Circles. Life’s information security program is www.c i rc l e s . lif e/ s g
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“ Founded on the belief that telcos can - and should be better. Our vision is to be the go to customer band that delights and engages customers with personalised digital services across the world” — Mohamed Noordin Yusuff Marican, CISO, Circles.Life
its process. “We continuously work to ensure that we have the strong prcesses in place to defend the organisation against attacks, as well as having the right-fit security technologies. We can not only have one of these three elements, we need to have the people, processes, and technology to ensure that cybersecurity becomes an enabler for the business.” Circling back to the company’s core vision ‘to give power back to the customers’, Noordin reflects on the company’s culture. “Our customers are our key pillar when we are executing our work, each
2016
Year founded
643
Number of Employees
CEO Rameez Ansar
11 and every one of us has our company
already being a digital company,
vision resonating in our day to day work.
Circles.Life was already well suited
Whilst each team has its own KPIs and
to sustain its operations. “We do not
priorities, they are all ultimately driven
have on premise server rooms or
by the core company-wide priority,
data centres,” comments Noordin,
ensuring that our company is aligned
“our workloads are in the cloud and
in the work that we do.”
so we are purely a cloud native, digital company which allow staff to work
COVID-19: MAINTAIN CYBERRESILIENCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
from anywhere.”
It is common knowledge that digital
cloud based element of its operations that
transformation has sped up significantly
is important for becoming resilient.
as a result of COVID-19, Noordin
“You are only able to become more
explains that Circles.Life was quite
resilient if you can execute day to day
lucky when the pandemic hit due to
operations in the office from anywhere.
Noordin goes on to explain that it is this
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C IRCLES.LIFE’ S STR ATEGIC PARTNERS
“So far we are very happy with the service that Proficio provides. Proficio helps us to provide key cybersecurity statistics to management and helps to detect and respond to security threats timely.”
“Crowdstrike is a seamless tool which helps us with our endpoint protection to prevent and detect malicious threats.”
12 “We engage with HackerOne to develop our vulnerability disclosure program. So right now, it’s a private vulnerability disclosure program whereby we allow a group of hackers that have been preselected by HackerOne to carry out penetration testing and hack our applications to determine our potential vulnerabilities.”
“JumpCloud is a seamless, cloud-based domain controller. It allows us to manage all our endpoints globally.”
“ Our workloads are all in the cloud so we are purely a cloud native, digital company which allow us to be able to work from anywhere” — Mohamed Noordin Yusuff Marican, CISO, Circles.Life
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Our cloud based tools provide us with
that they may not even need to have an
a hybrid function whereby we can have
office, I believe that most organisations
some people working from home and
are creating a hybrid approach to office
some people in the office.”
work as they come to understand when
While Circles.Life was well suited to sustain its operations when the outbreak
it is important to be in the office and when it is not.”
occurred, Noordin explains some of the challenges that the company faced. “Some of the key challenges I would say, included the desire to be in the office to collaborate with peers and team members. It is very important to build that camaraderie within a team. However, while I think more and more companies are realising www.c i rc l e s . lif e/ s g
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