BrazilEY's Paul Nizov returns to US to become ABBYY's first CISO
EY’s MENA Managing Director of Cybersecurity Paul Nizov has returned to the United States to take on the role of Chief Information Security Officer at a major global software company.
Paul Nizov had been with the accounting and consulting giant for just seven months according to his LinkedIn profile, now returning to the US following a near four-year stint in the region. He landed in the UAE at the start of 2017 when he was appointed Cyber Security lead for the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, which is being built in the Al Dhafrah Region of Abu Dhabi.
Most recently at EY, he led the firm’s cybersecurity offering in the Middle East and North Africa (one of the leading propositions in the region), and served as the linking pin between the firm’s global practice. In his consultant role, he focused mainly on advising Emirati and Saudi clients on establishing cyber security capabilities to combat threats.
Now at ABBYY, Nizov has been named the firm’s first Chief Information Security Officer, tasked with overseeing the strategic, operational, and budgetary aspects of security risk, including software development, data privacy, and information protection. As a board member, he will advocate the importance and impact of security among the company’s leadership team.
“The addition of Paul to our team reflects our commitment to provide customers and partners with products and solutions designed, deployed, and delivered with state-of-the-art security practices in mind. Information security and data privacy are non-negotiables,” said Ulf Persson, CEO of ABBYY.
Nizov said of the appointment. “I look forward to working with the leadership and product teams to ensure that ABBYY continues to maintain the most rigorous levels of security in both its products and infrastructure to support the extreme demands of our multinational commercial and public sector customers.”
Founded in 1989, ABBYY provides software solutions that help organisations manage their business processes, most renowned for its process mining and document processing capabilities. The Silicon Valley headquartered company serves more than 5,000 companies, including many of the Fortune 500.
Earlier in his career, Nizov worked for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Booz Allen Hamilton.
During his career he has gained extensive expertise in designing and implementing enterprise-wide disaster recovery, business continuity, crisis management, and incident response capabilities, and in regulatory compliance and security frameworks such as NIST, ISO, SOC, HITRUST, HIPAA and GDPR.
