MakwaIT’s head of governance, risk and assurance, Michèle Duncan, shares the company’s commitment to recognising IT leaders who are leading in the cybersecurity space.
Excitement for the 2025 CIO Awards continues to build as the “Oscars of IT” are just a few hours away. MakwaIT, CIO South Africa’s trusted partner, will present the Cybersecurity Award. This award celebrates a CIO who has implemented effective and industry-leading cybersecurity strategies that have protected their organisation.
MakwaIT’s sponsorship of the cybersecurity category at this year’s CIO Awards reflects its focus on cyber assurance as the foundation for transformative growth. CIO South Africa spoke with Michèle Duncan who shared that the company aims to help CIOs shift from reactive controls to proactive, self-healing and business-relevant postures that anticipate and adapt to evolving threats.
Q: What motivated MakwaIT to sponsor the cybersecurity category at this year’s CIO Awards, and how does it align with your broader strategic goals in the South African technology landscape?
A: We’re backing cybersecurity because the award recognises the day-to-day efforts of unsung business champions that take the battle to cybersecurity antagonists. These are the champions who defend a multitude of attacks in all their forms, daily. The recognition they receive for successful defences never make it into the press, simply due to their very nature: they were successful. The aim is therefore to shift focus from the cybersecurity infringements to the cybersecurity champions, platforming the people doing the hard, unglamorous work.
You can see that shift across the SA community this year, from CIO round-ups to Microsoft’s local briefing calling for proactive defence as AI reshapes the threat landscape. That’s the change we want to incentivise with this award. There’s no doubt, now is the right moment to nudge the whole ecosystem forward.
Q: How does MakwaIT view the current state of cybersecurity innovation within local enterprises, and what impact do you hope this award will have on driving further progress?
A: There’s real momentum in SA: stronger Security Operations Centre (SOC) practices, better identity hygiene and more cloud-native controls showing up in universities, banks and large enterprises. You can feel it in the industry through the problem statements we’re hearing from CIOs that collaboration, clarity and measurable outcomes are the themes. At the same time, attackers are iterating quickly with their AI-enabled tradecraft and faster ransomware playbooks, so the bar keeps moving.
What we want this award to do is spotlight programmes that are both technically sound and operationally lived: automated basics, real incident rehearsal and recovery metrics that execs understand. Recognition creates replicable patterns.
Q: In what ways does MakwaIT collaborate with CIOs to strengthen organisational resilience against evolving cyber threats, and how does this sponsorship support that mission?
A: Our model is simple: allow us to handle the pangs of cybersecurity concerns while you handle your business growth drivers, as we have been doing this successfully for top leading banks in the country. We know it’s an ever-evolving learn-it-all posture we need to invest in daily, so our clients don’t have to. That’s why we lead with our subject-matter experts and a mix of industry-leading Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to pair technology, security and governance so policies aren’t shelfware.
That’s exactly what South African CIOs have been voicing this season: proactive security, tighter business alignment and clear communication. By sponsoring the cybersecurity award, we’re scaling that mission beyond our projects by celebrating the leaders who have enabled their global growth agenda by not only throttling cyber-attackers, but making resilience a competitive advantage.
