Sithembile Songo, Group CISO, Eskom Holdings SOC

The passion for what she does cannot be mistaken from the moment you start speaking to Sithembile Songo, Eskom’s group CISO, and you know you are speaking to a collaborative, dynamic woman who leads by example.

With over 20 years of experience in her field as both a cybersecurity professional and in leadership roles, Sithembile Songo has occupied various cybersecurity leadership positions in both the public and private sectors. She always aims to make her mark by uplifting the cybersecurity posture in every organisation that she has worked for, and Eskom is no exception. She joined the organisation in November 2021. Already, she has overcome the perceptions that no one can implement any major change in an entity the size of Eskom in under a year. In a matter of months and through her leadership and effective engagement with a supportive CIO and exco, she managed to put in place an end-to-end monitoring solution that detects anomalous behaviours from anywhere within a corporate network. This solution leverages on self-learning artificial intelligence to intercept and neutralise cyber threats and currently protects and provides a unified, 24/7 cybersecurity posture view for over hundreds of thousands of devices, with fully autonomous actions across all servers and client devices.