"Samantha and Nicholas are two of the most experienced cyber security professionals in our region, and I couldn't have hoped for better leaders to join us and kick off our CxO advisory team in APAC," said Netskope APAC CIO and CSO David Fairman, who leads the program.

"They recognise the importance of collaboration in our industry to help the world keep pace with cyber threat actors, and this is precisely the philosophy behind the creation of our CxO teams across the globe. Samantha and Nicholas bring diverse and unique sets of knowledge, and have experience driving major security transformations involving complex conversations with executives and boards. These are rare skills that our customers and teams will be able to tap, and I thank them for their involvement."

MacLeod and McKenzie are the first members of the Netskope advisory board dedicated to the APAC region.

MacLeod's 20-plus years in the technology and security industry include working as interim general manager of security issues at NBN Co, as CISO at at ME Bank and AGL Energy, and APAC technology and security risk solutions director at GE Capital. She continues to be a partner in consultancy firm The Security Collective.

Earlier in her career she held sales-related roles at Oracle, Proactive Services and Volante, after working in IT at GE Money and NAB.

MacLeod holds an honours degree in information systems from Deakin University, is a certified information systems auditor and a certified information security manager. and is is a Fellow of the Australian Information Security Association.

"Many organisations, especially SMEs, continue to be challenged by cyber security problems in APAC," she said.

"This advisory role is an opportunity for me to share knowledge with more executives, and help strengthen cyber risk management practices across more organisations, including through advocacy of Netskope's platform. In doing so, I hope to create more opportunities for Netskope to help customers automate the protection of their data and improve their overall understanding of complex security challenges."

Nicholas McKenzie has been a cyber security professional for more than 20 years, continues to work as CISO at Bugcrowd as well as being a board advisor to NVISIONx, chairman of Red Piranha's advisory board, and a limited partner and advisor at SixThirty.

He previously worked as CSO at NAB, global head and managing director for technology, information security and operational risk at Standard Chartered Bank, APAC executive director of it risk and security management at JP Morgan, APAC CISO at NatWest Markets, associate director of new technologies at UBS, senior security consultant at both Dimension Data and EY.

McKenzie holds a bachelor of commerce degree from Murdoch University, a master's in ecommerce from Curtin University, and several industry certifications.

"Cyber security is a team effort. The more cyber security companies and professionals collaborate with one another, the more we will achieve cyber resilience among organisations," he said.

"A board advisory role for Netskope as an opportunity to embrace this philosophy. Using my industry knowledge and global network, I'm aiming to help more APAC executives and organisations with advice and guidance, and, as a Netskope user myself, help them understand how the solutions better enable security transformations."