The voting for new members for the TF-CSIRT Steering Committee will take place from 7th September 2021 – 10th September 2021. There are 2 seats open in this election for a full three year term.

Information about the elections will be sent to you directly via e-mail if you are eligible to vote. You MUST have your TI certificate to be able to vote and only one vote per team will be accepted – team reps can check their voter status with Trusted Introducer.  All changes to the voter list must be received by 6th September 2021.  Reminders will be sent to the main TF-CSIRT lists prior to voting. As a reminder, only accredited and certified teams are eligible to vote in elections. The full election rules can be found in the TF-CSIRT Terms of Reference.

Information about each of the candidates is included below to help you with voting.    

Candidate A: Shehzad Ahmad, NetsCERT

Information Security, Denmark. Before joining Nets, Shehzad was Head of DKCERT for 7 years. Shehzad has been a member of the TF-CSIRT community since 2007. From 2007 till 2015 as a TI-member and since 2015 as a TI Associate. Shehzad is also (since 2007) a member of FIRST. In Denmark Shehzad was the co-founder of The Danish Council for Digital Security which is an independent member organization with specialized knowledge and experience within information security and data privacy – and since 2012 he has been a board member of the council. For more than 13 years Shehzad has been sharing his knowledge and thoughts on Information Security by writing columns in newspapers. Shehzad was first elected to the Steering Committee in September 2017 and now seeks re-election. Further information about Shehzad can be found on LinkedIn.

Candidate B: David Byers, LiU IRT

I am seeking re-election for a second term on the TF-CSIRT steering committee. The last few years have been challenging and the steering committee has started a number of processes, where I believe that my background in a smaller academic team brings a valuable perspective, related to the future of TF-CSIRT and its strategies that I want to see through to their conclusion.

For those of you who don’t already know me, I am the head of the IT infrastructure office at Linköping University where I lead the university’s CSIRT and information security group (LiU IRT) and since the start I have made the team’s engagement with CSIRT community a priority.

Candidate C: Sigita Jurkynaitė, NRD CIRT

My name is Sigita and I am Director of CyberSOC at NRD Cyber Security. Many of you will know me for my time as one of the TF-CSIRT Coordinators alongside Nicole, where I helped grow TF-CSIRT to the community it is today. TF-CSIRT is at a critical phase in it’s development and I believe it needs people within the Steering Committee that have both a good understanding of how TF-CSIRT operates as an organisation and the needs of the community it serves. Having been a coordinator of the group, an active member of the education community within TF-CSIRT and a customer through NRD CIRT, I can bring my experience from many different angles to ensuring we build a great future for TF-CSIRT. I believe strongly in the benefits of community and will work to create a future for the group that serves the needs of not only the teams we support, but all the diverse members of those teams.

Candidate D: Jan Kopriva, ALEF-CSIRT

Dear colleagues and friends, for those of you, whom I haven’t yet had the pleasure to meet, my name is Jan and I lead a small internal/managed service CSIRT at Alef Nula – an IT/security provider from the Czech Republic – and I’m also one of the “Handlers” at the SANS Internet Storm Center. I have been part of the international CSIRT community for many years now and I’ve seen TF-CSIRT grow immensely over that time to the current state when Trusted Introducer service connects a community of nearly 450 teams. Although TF-CSIRT provides a significant value to participating teams as is, I believe there is a way to increase this value still further – specifically by coordinating research activities of participating teams, enabling easier sharing of threat intelligence, and improving and extending educational materials available as part of TRANSITS courses. Any and all of these improvements would of course need to be a community-driven effort, but I believe they are attainable, and they are something I would like to try to bring forward should I be elected to the TF-CSIRT Steering Committee, besides making sure that the community remains as open and inclusive as it is now.