2022 Expert Panellists
Ashish Thapar
Vice President & Head – Cybersecurity (Asia Pacific)
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT)
Dr. Chen Binbin
Associate Professor, Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD)
Singapore University of Technology and Design
Dr. Chen Binbin
Associate Professor, Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD) Singapore University of Technology and Design
Dr. Chen Binbin is currently an Associate Professor in the Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD) pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). He also serves as the Deputy Director for the Future Communications Research and Development Programme (FCP), Singapore.
Prior to joining SUTD, Binbin was a Principal Research Scientist at Advanced Digital Sciences Center (ADSC), University of Illinois. He got his PhD from National University of Singapore and Bachelor from Peking University, both in Computer Science.
Dr. Goh Weihan
Associate Professor Singapore Institute of Technology
Dr. Weihan Goh is an Associate Professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), where he is Programme Leader for ICT programmes on the Competency-based Stackable Micro-credential (CSM) pathway. His research interests include security testing and digital forensics, as well as technologies for cybersecurity education such as cyber ranges, CTF / CDX, and anti-fraud / anti-cheat systems.
As a vulnerability researcher, Dr. Goh has been involved in vulnerability research leading to disclosures of vulnerabilities to both government and private stakeholders. He designed one of Singapore’s first competency-based workplace-learning degree pathways for adult learners, and prior to that, designed the curriculum pathways for Singapore’s first Cyber Specialist work-learn programme.
Beyond teaching and research, Dr. Goh participates in CTF exercises and has mentored student teams participating in cybersecurity competitions to successes both locally and internationally. Dr. Goh received his PhD and BEng, both in Computer Engineering, from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2013 and 2008 respectively. He goes by the CTF handler ‘icebear’.
Ashish Thapar
Vice President & Head – Cybersecurity (Asia Pacific) at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
Ashish brings more than two decades of cybersecurity experience to his current role at NTT heading the end-to-end cybersecurity business for Asia Pacific. In the most recent past, he led and managed security consulting business across the Asia-Pacific Japan region, spanning across multiple security practices including Security Strategy, Threat & Vulnerability management, Governance, Risk and Compliance, ICS/OT Security, Payment Security, Incident Response, Digital Forensics and Cyber Threat Intelligence
Along with his vast leadership experience, he also has top global domain certifications including CISSP, CISM, CISA, SANS GCFA, CCSK, CIPP/A, ISO 27001 LI and CDCP. In addition, he has also been an accredited PCI QSA, PFI and PA QSA for several years. He is an active speaker at numerous security industry events or seminars throughout Asia, including coverage on live TV programmes and radio or podcast interviews.
He also serves as a Lead Mentor and SME Panellist in the Cybersecurity domain, helping Singapore Cyber Security Agency (CSA), ICE71 and other organizations to help strengthen the overall cybersecurity ecosystem in the region.
Eddie Toh
Partner, Cyber Advisory and Head of Forensic Technology KPMG
Eddie, an Executive Director with KPMG in Singapore, has more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, digital forensic and incident response. Currently leading both Cyber and forensic technology services in Singapore, Eddie is also the regional leader for forensic technology in Asia Pacific.
Prior to KPMG, Eddie spent eight years with the Singapore Police Force (SPF) where he performed a wide range of duties including criminal and computer forensic investigation with the Criminal Investigation Department. He has provided expert testimonies to the High Court and Subordinate Court of Singapore on various criminal and civil proceedings.
In 2017, Eddie was appointed by the Singapore Police Force as a member of the “Home Team Investigations Expert Resource Group”. He is also the special advisor to the High Technology Crime Investigation Association (Singapore Chapter).
John Lee
Managing Director, Asia Pacific GRF Asia-Pacific
John Lee is the Managing Director of Global Resilience Federation Asia Pacific. He manages the Operational Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center (OT-ISAC), a community of trust for critical asset owners. OT-ISAC is headquartered in Singapore and support organisations, both public and private, in Asia Pacific. He has more than 20 years of Information Security and ICT experience. In his past roles, he has managed teams in Asia Pacific and Middle East responsible for IT Security and Infra-structure Services. He was responsible for the design and delivery of Information Security services. He had supported Governance, Risk and Compliance activities. He was also in the Project Management Office working on business transformation projects. He was a past Past President of ISACA Singapore chapter and a certified APMG trainer for its cybersecurity certifications.
Matthias Yeo
Chief Executive Officer CyberXCenter
Matthias is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CyberXCenter, a cybersecurity firm in Singapore that focuses on cybersecurity capability building within Industrial Control System (ICS) with services such as training, cyber exercises and cyber research He also double-hat as the Chief Operating Officer of Momentum Z, a CSA Cyber Essentials’ industry partner that helps to safeguard organization against the evolution of cyber threats. He provides technological directions and helps to steer the operations of Momentum Z’s acquisitions. He is a veteran in Cyber security and has over 20 years of experience in Cyber Security and Technology Leadership. He is presenting serving as an independent board of Director/Member in multiple Organisations He is actively involved in national level cyber exercise such as CISS (Critical Infrastructure Security Showdown) and CiDex (Critical Infrastructure Defence Exercise) organized by Ministry of Defence.
Prior to founding CyberXCenter and Momentum Z, Matthias has held several high-profile roles. His background was from a Government Research Team in cybersecurity, and was formerly the CTO of Symantec APAC, and CTO of Blue Coat APAC. He also previously served as the President of ISC2 (Singapore Chapter). Matthias is also an active conference speaker in Asia Pacific on security issues at technical conferences and industry events, where he provides deep insights into trends, developments, and strategies for digital security. He is often featured or quoted for his expert view of the security trends in APAC. He was featured in SG50 “A Nation of Skilled Talent” and was awarded “Asia Greatest CTO 2016” by URS Media.
Paul Choo
Managing Director Tangram Asia Capital
Paul is the Managing Director at Tangram Asia Capital. With more than 20 years experience in the venture capital and fund management industry, Paul’s previous roles include heading up Family Office as CEO/CIO of Karuna Pte Ltd (Tsao Family Office) and he had spent more than 10 years in China heading up the Beijing Office of Investor Growth Capital Asia (a technology investment vehicle owned by Investor AB and the Swedish Wallenberg Family). In 2000, he co-started M-Commerce Ventures Fund, one of the first mobile-focused VC fund in the world focusing on early stage technology companies during his time with EDB Investments.
Jackson Tan
Chief Executive Officer SYNthesize Pte Ltd
Jackson is the founder of several tech companies offering bespoke IT solutions, consultancy, and cyber-security services. Being a certified and practicing cyber-security practitioner, he is deeply knowledgeable about the latest cyber and technical threats in today’s complex and challenging technology landscape. Prior to his entrepreneurial portfolio, he joined the Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies (CSIT), an agency of the Defence Technology Community (DTC) of Singapore. Jackson was fast-tracked through various technical roles and management appointments, allowing him to gain a diverse range of experience from application development, security assessments and policies, infrastructure and virtualization, penetration testing, and operations management. For two years prior, he was also the CEO of a strategic vendor company offering nationwide security solutions to the Home Affairs Ministry of Singapore.
Dr. Vivy Suhendra
Associate Professor (Practice Track)
School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Sugar Chan
Manager Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Prior to joining BCG, Sugar has worked at various multinational consulting firms including Booz Allen Hamilton, PwC, EY, and IBM. With this profound consulting experience for organizations in various industries, she can provide a well-rounded perspective on the trends that are important for CISOs/CIOs today. Her area of expertise anchors around cyber strategy and transformation, cyber risk quantification, and cyber defence defence . She currently also serves as an Executive Committee Member in the Singapore Association of Information Security Professionals (AiSP), and is actively involved in the “Ladies in Cyber” chapter.
Dr. Tan Teik Guan
Chief Executive Officer pQCee
Dr. Tan works in the niche area of cryptographic security design and integration, having implemented numerous successful projects and products such as CAs, smartcards (Javacard), HSMs, Authentication Servers,for banks, government agencies and enterprises.
He has also worked in the commercial world, having led DS3 for over a decade through organic growth, to Series A, to eventually being acquired by an MNC.
Dr. Vivy Suhendra
Associate Professor (Practice Track) at School of Computing National University of Singapore
Dr. Vivy Suhendra is an Associate Professor of Practice and Programme Director (Master Programmes) for Graduate Studies at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS). She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from NUS in 2009.
Dr. Vivy served as the Executive Director of the Singapore Cybersecurity Consortium (SGCSC) from 2016 to 2022, facilitating collaborative research and development between academia, industry, and government in the field of cybersecurity. Prior to this engagement, she was a research scientist at Institute for Infocomm Research, A*STAR, conducting applied research in system security and content protection.
2021 Technical Experts
Prof. Alex Siow
Professor (Practice), School of Computing
National University of Singapore
Prof. Anupam Chattopadhyay
Associate Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering
Nanyang Technology University
Ashish Thapar
Vice President & Head – Cybersecurity (Asia Pacific)
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
Prof. Anupam Chattopadhyay
Associate Professor at NTU
Prof.Anupam Chattopadhyay received his B.E. degree from Jadavpur University, India, MSc. from ALaRI, Switzerland and PhD from RWTH Aachen in 2000, 2002 and 2008 respectively. From 2008 to 2009, he worked as a Member of Consulting Staff in CoWare R&D, Noida, India. From 2010 to 2014, he led the MPSoC Architectures Research Group in RWTH Aachen, Germany as a Junior Professor. Since September, 2014, he is appointed as an Assistant Professor in SCSE, NTU and also holds an honorary adjunct appointment at SPMS, NTU.
In the past, he was visiting Professor at Politecnico di Torino, Italy; EPFL, Switzerland and Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. During his doctoral studies, he worked on automatic RTL generation from the processor description language LISA, which led to a spin-off, and subsequently was acquired by a leading EDA vendor. He developed novel high-level optimisations, verification techniques, and proposed a language-based modelling, exploration and design framework for partially re-configurable processors – many of which resulted in successful technology transfers to the EDA and Semiconductor IP industry.
Prof.Anupam currently heads a team of 20+ researchers, overseeing projects in the area of cyber security, computer architectures, design automation and emerging technologies. His research advances has been reported in more than 150 conference/journal papers (ACM/IEEE/Springer), multiple research monographs and edited books (CRC, Springer). Prof.Anupam’s research in the area of emerging technologies has been covered by major news outlets across the world, including Asian Scientist, Straits Times and The Economist. He is a series editor of Springer book series on Computer Architecture and Design Methodologies. Prof.Anupam received Borcher’s plaque from RWTH Aachen, Germany for outstanding doctoral dissertation in 2008, nomination for the best IP award in the ACM/IEEE DATE Conference 2016 and nomination for the best paper award in the International Conference on VLSI Design 2018. Prof.Anupam is a member of ACM, senior member of IEEE and fellow of Intercontinental Academia.
Prof. Abhik Roychoudhury
Provost Chair Professor of Computer Science at NUS
Prof.Abhik Roychoudhury is a Provost’s Chair Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore, where he has been since 2001 after receiving his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2000. He is the Director of the National Satellite of Excellence in Trustworthy Software Systems at Singapore (2019-23). He has also helped set up the Singapore Cyber-security Consortium , which is a consortium of 25 companies in the cyber-security space engaging with academia for research and collaboration.
Prof.Abhik’s research focuses on software testing and analysis, software security and trust-worthy software construction. His research team is known for contributions to automated program repair, and fuzz testing. Prof.Abhik is a member of the Steering committee of the flagship conferences in Software Engineering, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) and Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE). He has served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) and ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM). His former doctoral students have been placed all over the world as academics (Peking University, University College London, Max-Planck Institute, University of Melbourne, Beihang University, SUSTech, SUTD).
Ashish Thapar
Vice President & Head – Cybersecurity (Asia Pacific) at NTT
Ashish Thapar is the Vice President & Head for Security Consulting Services – Asia Pacific at NTT Ltd.. He brings more than two decades of Information Security experience and has been leading and managing security consulting teams across APJ region; spanning across multiple security practices including: Security Strategy; Threat & Vulnerability management; Governance, Risk and Compliance; Payment Security; Incident Response; Digital Forensics; and Cyber Threat Intelligence.
Along with his vast leadership experience, he also accomplished a number of global domain certifications including CISSP, CISM, CISA, SANS GCFA, CCSK, ISO 27001 LI and CDCP. In addition, he has also been an accredited PCI QSA, PFI and PA QSA for several years.
He is an active speaker at numerous security industry events/seminars throughout Asia, including coverage on live TV programmes and radio/podcast interviews. He also serves as a Lead Mentor and SME Panelist for Cybersecurity domain helping Singapore CSA, ICE71 and other organizations to help strengthen the overall cybersecurity ecosystem in the region.
Prof. Alex Siow
Professor (Practice) at NUS
Prof Alex Siow is Professor (Practice) in the department of Information Systems and Analytics of the School of Computing, NUS since 2015.
Prior to the current appointment, Prof Alex was the Managing Director, Health & Public Service at Accenture Pte Ltd. Alex started his career as a Structural Engineer in the Housing & Development Board in 1981 and rose through the ranks to become the Chief Information Officer in 1989. In 2003, Alex joined the private sector and became the Senior Vice-President in StarHub Ltd. At StarHub he held various roles including Head, Business Markets, CIO and Head, Enterprise Risk Management. In 2012, he joined Accenture as a Managing Director, Health and Public Service.
Alex held various appointments in the IT community including President of Singapore Computer Society, President of IT Management Association and President of PMI Singapore Chapter. He is currently the Chairman of the Cloud Security Alliance Singapore Chapter.
Alex is currently in a number of boards, including Toffs Technologies, DART Consulting, Red Alpha, SUSS, THK Moral Charities, Findjobs, KSC Consulting, Tee International and AMK-THK Hospital.
Alex’s book “Leading with IT: Lessons from Singapore’s first CIO” was published in Feb 2021.
Prof. Gao Debin
Associate Professor, School of Computing and Information Systems
Singapore Management University
Prof. Liu Yang
Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering
Nanyang Technology University
Prof. Gao Debin
Associate Professor at SMU
Prof.Debin is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Singapore Management University. Having obtained his PhD degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Debin focuses his research on software and systems security. In recent years, Prof.Debin also actively participates in research of mobile security, cloud security, and human factors in security. Prof.Debin is the program committee co-chair of international conference ICICS 2021. He’s the recipient of the Lee Kong Chian Fellowship in year 2017 and 2022.
Prof. Liu Yang
Professor at NTU
Dr. Yang Liu obtained his bachelor and ph.d degree in the National University of Singapore in 2005 and 2010, respectively. In 2012, he joined Nanyang Technological University as a Nanyang Assistant Professor. He is currently a full professor, director of the cybersecurity lab, Program Director of HP-NTU Corporate Lab and Deputy Director of the National Satellite of Excellence of Singapore. In 2019, he received the University Leadership Forum Chair professorship at NTU.
Dr. Liu specializes in software verification, security and software engineering. His research has bridged the gap between the theory and practical usage of formal methods and program analysis to evaluate the design and implementation of software for high assurance and security. By now, he has more than 300 publications in top tier conferences and journals. He has received a number of prestigious awards including MSRA Fellowship, TRF Fellowship, Nanyang Assistant Professor, Tan Chin Tuan Fellowship, Nanyang Research Award (Young Investigator) 2018, NRF Investigatorship 2020 and 10 best paper awards and one most influence system award in top software engineering conferences like ASE, FSE and ICSE.
Michael Lew
CEO at Rajah & Tann Technologies
Chairman at Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) Cyber Risk Sub-Committee
Michael Lew is the CEO at Rajah & Tann Technologies and Chairman of the Cyber Risk sub-committee of the Singapore Fintech Association. He is also a founding member of ASEAN Legaltech and was President of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association (HTCIA Singapore Chapter).
He has more than 20 years of extensive experience in technology and cyber risk management, digital forensics, e-discovery, financial crime, and, in recent years, blockchain investigations.
Michael is also a leading cyber forensics expert in Asia who provides expert testimonies in courts and thought leadership in various publications.
Just last year, Michael was named as one of 30 people to watch in Asia in the business of Law by Asia Law Portal. Michael is one of the pioneers in Southeast Asia who specializes in Blockchain & Digital Assets investigation and obtained CCI certification (Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator).
Emil Tan
Co-Founder of Division Zero (Div0)
Emil started his career in infosec as a researcher at Singapore’s Defence Science National Laboratories, focusing primarily in the area of intrusion detection and deception. He was later appointed security administrator at a Security Ops Centre in the Ministry of Defence, Singapore. Emil then pursued his BSc Computer Science and MSc Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Emil is an active advocate in the infosec community. He founded Edgis, a special interest group, and is also a Chapter Member with The Honeynet Project. Apart from these commitments, he also actively gets himself involved in infosec groups and events such as BSides London, Null Singapore, etc.
Emil’s infosec foundation is highly technical, however he was also involved in other interdisciplinary studies during his university years, e.g. political science, communication science, geospatial theory, psychology, etc. Emil now enjoys viewing the infosec world through this multi-disciplinary lens.
Dr. Vivy Suhendra
Executive Director of the
Singapore Cybersecurity Consortium
Dr.Vivy Suhendra is the Executive Director of the Singapore Cybersecurity Consortium since its launch in 2016.
She is responsible for programme planning and strategic management of the Consortium as an academia-industry-government engagement platform to foster research translation, technology awareness, and collaborative R&D efforts in cybersecurity. Prior to joining the Consortium, Vivy was a research scientist at Institute for Infocomm Research, A*STAR, focusing on system security and content protection. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2009.