Chris Vermeulen is the group chief information security officer for Sanlam Ltd, and a big believer in the value of collaboration in the information security industry.He played an active part in the creation of more than one industry CSIRT in South Africa and continuously pursues opportunities facilitate peer and industry level collaboration.

During his 27 years involvement with technology Chris fulfilled multiple roles in e-commerce and payment card application development environments before settling in the information security space. During his career Chris has spent most of his time in the financial sector in South Africa in companies like Boland Bank, BOE Business Bank, Nedbank and Metropolitan Health Group; with the biggest portion of his career focused on establishing information security and cyber resilience capabilities in Capitec Bank and Sanlam. Chris currently holds a B.Sc. (Physics)(US), B.Ed. (US); MBA (UCT), CISSP, CISM, CRISC, CDPSE and is qualified as an ISO27001 Lead Implementer.