CyberCyte Leadership

Gokhan Say

Chairman

Gokhan is a self-driven cyber security executive with a passion for growth. He has more than 30 years of experience in the field of cyber security. He was the country manager of Symantec for more than 15 years before founding two successful cyber security companies. One of the companies he founded is ATAR Labs. ATAR Labs was acquired by Micro Focus recently. Before founding ATAR Labs, Gokhan also initiated Turkey’s biggest cyber security distribution company Innovera, which merged with Cyberwise in 2020. Gokhan has in-depth experience with global cyber security vendors, the distribution ecosystem, and start-up’s.

Gokhan holds a BA Business Management degree from Hacettepe University, Turkey.

Malcolm Tuck

Board Member

Malcolm’s impressive background as a senior executive in leading IT security companies such as ESET and Kaspersky Lab, along with his experience in strategic partnerships and international expansion, highlights his expertise in growing high tech companies. His diverse career, including time in the Royal Air Force and Royal New Zealand Air Force and as a business owner, has provided him with a unique perspective on cyber security and a valuable network in the industry. Additionally, his role as a judge for industry awards demonstrates his recognition and influence in the cyber security space.

Gord Boyce

Board Member

Gord is a high-tech veteran, bringing over 25 years of industry experience to the market. He has played an instrumental role in two previous successful tech exits resulting in great returns for investors and employees. He has grown annual sales by a factor of 20X, increased shareholder value by over 10X, managed expenses to preserve cash while maximizing growth strategy, ran multi $100M business on two separate occasions, and scaled both from a few as 15 employees to over 350. He has lead fundraising efforts, which secured $50M in investment and over $40M in debt facilities while closing 8 figure enterprise software deals with some of the largest companies and government institutions in the world. He has been responsible for turning around ailing businesses into a successful and high-growth businesses. He is also a skilled leader, strategist, and operator. He has been successful at both early-stage start-up’s as well as large established international enterprises. He has a deep understanding of the security, cloud, and IoT landscape in perpetual and SaaS sales models.

Gord holds a Bachelor of Engineering and management in electrical engineering from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Tamer Ozmen

Board Member

Tamer was leading and shaping Microsoft’s Digital and Enterprise Services Division. Previously he was the CEO of Microsoft Turkey for five years which went through its own truly transformational journey. During his tenure, through clear vision and challenge to achieve more, he tripled revenues and transformed the Turkish subsidiary into the fastest growing subsidiary within Microsoft Worldwide, where MS Turkey became the “Subsidiary of the Year” three times via achieving the highest profitability and revenue growth. Before joining Microsoft, Tamer started his career at Priceline .com. Tamer later moved to Europe to start Priceline Europe in London, where he also launched the company’s European operations to support the global growth strategy. Tamer went on to be the Group Vice President for Online and Multichannel at Orange. Based in the UK, Tamer was responsible for running Orange’s Online Division. He developed and executed Orange’s Digital Transformation and launched the omnichannel program.

Hisham Zireeni

Board Member

Hisham is a Canadian citizen, holding a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree, and Postgraduate Diploma in Innovation and Design Thinking. He is an experienced senior professional with solid technical and management skills in engineering, and business management in telecom, ICT, Cyber security, product development, management consulting, project, and business development. He held leading positions at international firms in Canada, the USA, and the Middle East Region. He worked on developing VoIP, Data security appliance, Wi-Fi AP and Control, Wireless Broadband Access, Bandwidth acceleration, Lawful Intercept Gateway, M2M (IoT), AAA, RFID, and more technologies, products, system architecture, protocols and network planning for real-time applications.

Zahri Yunos

Board Member

Zahri has more than 33 years working experience in ICT field, both in government and private organisations. He later joined CyberSecurity Malaysia in 2001 (formerly known as National ICT Security and Emergency Response Centre – NISER), an agency under the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia Malaysia and was appointed as Chief Operating Officer in 2006.

Zahri was a central figure in establishment of the OIC-Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT), a collaborative effort of cybersecurity initiatives amongst the OIC countries. He was actively involved in implementation of the Malaysia’s National Cyber Security Policy, which boosted Malaysia international image in cybersecurity. In recognition of his expertise in cybersecurity, Zahri has been appointed as Board Member and Industry Adviser to several organisations/research institutions in Malaysia and abroad.

Zahri holds PhD in Information Security from University Technical Malaysia Melaka (Malaysia), MSc in Communication Engineering from University Technology Malaysia (Malaysia) and BSc in Computer Science from Fairleigh Dickinson University (New Jersey, USA).

Noureddin Alayubi

Board Member

Noureddin is a strong leader and a critical thinker who uses logic and reason to identify and evaluate situations and their alternative solutions. With more than 20 years in the IT industry and experience in the middle east region especially Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he has a wealth of sales and operational knowledge to pull from. With hard work and dedication, he occupied several significant key role positions that was the basis of his career path development and quickly moved up the ranks from an account manager, to Sales Manager, until he took on his first General Manager role in 2017.

He helped in leading business operations and setting strategies to ensure growth and goal achievement, he uses his positive attitude and tireless energy to encourage his team to work hard and succeed.

Noureddin earned his bachelor degree in electrical engineering in 2001, and he developed his knowledge in technology widely

Mete Buyergen

Board Member

Mete Buyurgan was born in 1957 in Istanbul. After completing his architectural education in Germany, he continued his career in constructing the Turkish Grand National Assembly and the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Mete Buyurgan continues his business life as the founding partner of YOO Architecture and h+y contract group companies.

Umut Yesilirmak

Chief Executive Officer

Umut is the founder of CyberCyte and had been in IT for more than 17 years. He was chosen the best CIO of the year in 2012 by IDG group research. Umut worked for government as head of IT and lead 4 big Government IT projects for 11 years. He then moved to private sector and become the General Manager of Bilgikent which was awarded “The Big Star Award of Deloitte at 2016 for the fastest growing IT Company of EMEA region”.

Umut is a senior consultant for World Bank in the field of establishing IT framework’s for National Social Security System’s.

Umut studied computer engineering and is currently making a PhD in cyber security. He loves mountain hiking and swimming.

Necati Ertugrul

Chief Strategy Officer

Necati has more than 20 years of experience in cyber security and worked in different technical and managerial roles.

Previously he was the founder of MAY Cyber. He was responsible for the R&D Division and product strategy. MAY Cyber became the biggest cyber security vendor in Turkey and Necati made an exit from the company in 2018 and founded CyberCyte.

Necati started his IT career in Finansbank and then worked in TUBITAK as a project manager. Necati holds BSc. Degree in Electrical-Electronic Engineering from Middle East Technical University and a MBA from Marmara University. He is also certified as CISSP, PMP and ISO 27001 Lead Auditor.

Necati is a skier and a diver. He also enjoys cycling in London.

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