Dawood Essop

Dawood Essop has over 20 years of work experience in the field of information security and IT infrastructure. dawood currently serves as a vCISO (Chief Information Security Officer) at Performanta, where they provide leadership and implements information security strategies for clients in various industries. Prior to this, Dawood worked as an IT Infrastructure and IT Security Consultant & Manager at Q-IT. dawood also held the role of Cyber Security Manager at Alexforbes. In their earlier career, Dawood served as a Disaster Recovery and IT Continuity Architect at Eskom, where they designed and implemented DR solutions and tested capabilities for critical systems. dawood has also worked at T-Systems as an IT Continuity Manager/Consultant, at Dimension Data as a Data Protection Manager, at F&C Asset Management as a Senior Systems Engineer, at McGraw Hill Financial as a Server and Support Engineer, and at Bytes Technology Group as an IT Administrator.

Dawood Essop holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Information Technology, which they obtained from the University of South Africa/Universiteit van Suid-Afrika. dawood pursued this degree from 2004 to 2013. In 2009, Dawood completed a Technical Specialist course in Backups from Symantec. In the year 2003 to 2004, they received the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) certification from Microsoft. Prior to their higher education, Dawood attended Stanmore Secondary School from 1993 to 1996, though they did not earn a degree or specialize in any field during that period.

Apart from their formal education, Dawood has acquired multiple certifications. In 2008, they obtained the IT Information Library Foundations Certification (ITIL) from Foster-Melliar. More recently, in July 2022, they obtained the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification from ISACA. Additionally, they hold the Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate certification, earned in June 2023. Currently, Dawood is working towards completing the ISO/IEC 27002 Lead Manager certification from PECB and the Microsoft Certified Security Architect Expert certification from Microsoft, although the specific completion months and years for these certifications are not specified.