Every year, many people turn our flagship event into a success. They don't get paid – at least not by us – but they work tirelessly, and never complain. Here, we pay tribute to the winners of the Cybersecurity Achievement Award and the CISO of the Year Award. However, we don't forget the CISO of the Year Award nominees: all of them are excellent performers in their field, worthy of a spot on the podium. Lastly, we mention our board members, who, through formal and informal channels, are the driving force behind this community.

Here, we honor all of these professionals – as long as eternity lasts.
 

CISOs of the Year

Florence Mottay – 2025
Florence's continuous efforts to strengthen her organization's cybersecurity and successful communication with management and employees contributed to her win, as well as her contributions to cross-company cybersecurity efforts. Florence, who began her career 25 years ago in the U.S. as an ethical hacker specializing in writing exploits, has a diverse career path. She spent ten years leading various branches of companies in information security in EMEA and became CISO at Ahold Delhaize, then at Zalando.
 

Jeroen Schipper – 2024
Jeroen owed the award to his transformational role and his holistic and inclusive approach to cybersecurity. His contributions to the professionalization of the CISO profession and his representation of the city of The Hague in cybersecurity matters were taken into consideration as well. Jeroen has made digital resilience the focus of the security strategy of The Hague. He has a background in IT and more than 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, largely gained at the Ministry of Defence.
 

CISO of the Year Award Nominees

Vladimir Cibic – 2025
Vladimir Cibic has worked at KPN for over a quarter of a century in diverse roles, including Executive Vice President for IT and CIO, Vice President of Customer Experience, and Director of Process and Change Management. He has been the CISO for the past three years and was one of three nominees for the 2025 CISO of the Year Award.

 

Martin de Vries – 2025
Martin de Vries has been the CISO at Eindhoven University of Technology since spring 2021. Previously, he worked at Rabobank for 22 years in various (security) roles. Martin was a mentor for startups and scale-ups within Rockstart and Startupbootcamp. He was one of the three nominees for the 2025 CISO of the Year Award.


 

Jan Joost Bierhoff – 2024
Jan Joost Bierhoff has been the Director of Operations (COO) at the NCSC-NL since 2025. He is also the Head of Project Office at DIVD. Before NCSC, he was the Global CISO at Heineken for four years and the director of Global Information Security before that. Prior to joining Heineken, he was a senior consultant with Deloitte Enterprise Risk Services. Jan Joost was one of five nominees for the 2024 CISO of the Year Award.
 

Floor van Eijk – 2024
Floor van Eijk, CISO and Head of Enterprise Security Services at NN Group, was the senior manager for Security Assurance at the company before becoming CISO in 2021. She had several positions in IT change management at Nationale Nederlanden before that. Floor was one of five nominees for the 2024 CISO of the Year Award.

 

Pieter van Houten – 2024
Pieter van Houten is the Head of Global IT Strategy & Governance Office at SHV and the former CISO of the company, where he started as an IT Auditor in 2015. Before joining SHV, he was a Senior Manager at KPMG's IT Advisory. Pieter was one of the five nominees for the 2024 CISO of the Year Award.


 

Lies de Wit – 2024
Lies de Wit has been CISO at Stater since 2023. Before joining Stater, she was Director of Cybersecurity Governance at Danone, taught at the Security Academy, and was CISO at Nederlandse Spoorwegen. Lies was one of five nominees for the 2024 CISO of the Year Award.



 

Tech Hero Award Winners

Victor Gevers – 2025
Victor Gevers, CTO and researcher at DIVD, is also co-founder and CEO at CSIRT.global. Before he co-founded DIVD in 2019, he was Innovation Manager and Security Architect for the national government. Chris has a background as a hacker/researcher. He received the 2025 Cybersecurity Achievement Award for his contributions to DIVD, together with Astrid Oosenbrug and Chris van 't Hof.
 

Chris van 't Hof – 2025
Chris van 't Hof is Managing Director and co-founder of DIVD, a researcher, writer, moderator, and presenter of talks and programs on IT and cybersecurity topics. He received the 2025 Cybersecurity Achievement Award for his contributions to DIVD, together with Astrid Oosenbrug and Victor Gevers.


 

Astrid Oosenbrug – 2025
Astrid Oosenbrug is co-founder and Confidential Advisor at DIVD. She also co-founded the DIVD Academy, of which she is the Director. Astrid is also the Public Affairs and CSR Officer at ESET Nederland. She has had a varied career with many different roles in business and non-profits. Between 2012 and 2017, Astrid was also an MEP for the Dutch Labour Party, specializing in Privacy, Telecoms, and Government IT. She received the 2025 Cybersecurity Achievement Award for her contributions to DIVD, together with Victor Gevers and Chris van 't Hof.
 

Hans de Vries – 2024
Hans de Vries is Chief Cybersecurity and Operational Officer at ENISA. Before he joined ENISA in 2024, he was the Director of NCSC-NL for over nine years. Before NCSC, Hans worked in various IT and cybersecurity-related roles at the Ministry of Internal Affairs for over a decade. He received the 2024 Cybersecurity Achievement Award for his longstanding contribution to cybersecurity in the Netherlands.
 

Current and Former Board Members

Dimitri van Zantvliet
Dimitri has over three decades of experience in cybersecurity, which includes leadership positions at multinationals, government, consultancies, and critical infrastructures. Currently, he is the Cybersecurity Director and CISO of Dutch Railways (NS). Dimitri is also co-chair of the Dutch and European Rail ISACS and European Railway CISO Forum, cyber columnist/author, and a regular speaker at international conferences. He is the co-founder of the CISO Community and chair of the CISO Platform Nederland.
 

Louisella ten Pierik
Luisella is the CISO of Stedin and the manager of the CIO Office. She has a passion for IT, information security, and cybersecurity, and has built an extensive knowledge of the security domain. Luisella is the vice chair and secretary of the board.



 

Justin Broeders
Since 2023, Justin has been the concern-level CISO at the Ministry of Finance. He also participates in the CISO Council of the central government. Before joining the ministry, Justin served as CISO and headed the CIO Office at Eneco. As a board member, Justin focuses on further developing CISO knowledge and competencies.


 

Rob Beijleveld 
Rob Beijleveld is co-founder of the CISO Community. He is the CEO of ICT Media, which organizes events such as CISODAY and CIODAY. Rob is also the initiator and juror of several awards, such as the CIO and CISO of the Year Awards. Rob believes that CISOs should have a more prominent place: not just on the board of their company, but in our society as well. Rob is the interim treasurer of CISO Platform Nederland.
 

Mahdi Abdulrazak 
Mahdi Abdulrazak built a long career in cybersecurity. As a longtime CISO for SHV Energy, he joined the CISO Community and CISO Platform Nederland as a board member. Before working at SHV Energy, Mahdi held various cybersecurity roles at many organizations. In the summer of 2025, he announced that he had co-founded a cybersecurity startup that leverages AI to secure the entire IT landscape: Dawnguard.ai.