AVP, Cybersecurity & Network Operations

About Takaful Ikhlas

Takaful Ikhlas Berhad is renamed to Takaful Ikhlas Family Berhad (Takaful IKHLAS Family) and manages the family takaful business. Its general takaful business is being managed by a new entity, Takaful Ikhlas General Berhad (Takaful IKHLAS General).

Takaful IKHLAS offers a comprehensive range of family and general takaful products. Its distribution channels comprise of highly knowledgeable and well-trained agents, brokers, financial institutions, motor franchise holders and cooperatives. Takaful IKHLAS has 13 branch offices and currently records around 2 million registered certificate (policy) holders and more than 5,000 agents.

Both Takaful IKHLAS Family and Takaful IKHLAS General are wholly owned subsidiaries of MNRB Holdings Berhad.

JOB PURPOSE:

The primary purpose of this role is to provide strategic leadership and direction in managing Takaful IKHLAS Information Technology (IT) Security & Network function. This includes developing and maintaining comprehensive security & network policies, frameworks, and controls to safeguard the Company's information assets. The role is responsible for overseeing daily security operations, managing technology risk assessment and compliance, ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements, and leading the management of enterprise network operations and network security services to ensure secure, resilient, and highly available connectivity across Takaful IKHLAS. Additionally, the position serves as a subject matter expert on cybersecurity, network security, and infrastructure resilience, providing strategic advisory support to align technology security and network initiatives with Takaful IKHLAS overall business objectives

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Manage and lead company-wide strategic initiatives and process improvement programs for IT Security and Network Operations across Takaful IKHLAS.

2. Lead Takaful IKHLAS cybersecurity and network security efforts, expenditure, and capital investments to achieve the Company's cyber resilience vision and desired security posture.

3. Manage information security, network security, and infrastructure security projects and assessments. Provide overall strategic direction and guidance for Security Operations Centre (SOC), Network Operations, IT Security Delivery, Risk Management, Infrastructure Security, and Cyber Resilience initiatives.

4. Manage key stakeholders and provide updates and direction on IT security, network security, and technology risk policies and processes within Takaful IKHLAS.

5. Provide consultation to stakeholders while ensuring compliance with approved cybersecurity policies, guidelines, standards, and governance requirements.

6. Lead planning and project management for cybersecurity awareness, education, and secure technology practices across Takaful IKHLAS.

7. Develop strategies to handle security incidents by establishing comprehensive incident response processes, reporting templates, escalation procedures, and overseeing investigations of reported security breaches.

8. Lead and participate with teams responsible for patch management, vulnerability management, network security monitoring, and security operations. Monitor, analyse, and respond to daily system and network alerts/logs from various internal and external sources, conduct correlation and forensic analysis, investigate suspicious events, identify abnormalities, report violations, resolve escalations within agreed SLA, and provide technical support.

9. Lead the Security Incident Response Team and develop countermeasures and recovery strategies to respond to and recover from cybersecurity incidents.

10. Provide cybersecurity advisories, threat intelligence updates, notifications, and awareness tips to stakeholders across Takaful IKHLAS.

11. Perform due diligence, risk assessments, and annual reviews of vendors, service providers, and technology partners.

Network Operations & Infrastructure Security

1. Lead and oversee enterprise-wide network operations to ensure high availability, reliability, performance, and security of LAN, WAN, Internet, cloud connectivity, and remote access services across Takaful IKHLAS.

2. Develop and implement network security architecture, standards, and controls covering firewalls, IDS/IPS, NAC, VPN, WAF, SD-WAN, and network segmentation.

3. Manage network monitoring and operational support activities to ensure compliance with service level agreements and operational excellence.

4. Establish proactive network performance monitoring, capacity planning, availability management, and lifecycle management practices.

5. Lead network troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and remediation activities for major incidents and service disruptions.

6. Oversee the management of routers, switches, firewalls, wireless infrastructure, load balancers, and other network and security appliances.

7. Ensure secure integration of on-premises, cloud, and hybrid network environments while maintaining compliance with regulatory and security requirements.

8. Develop and maintain network resilience, disaster recovery, and business continuity capabilities to support uninterrupted business operations.

9. Collaborate with Infrastructure, Cloud, Application, Vendor, and Business teams to deliver secure, efficient, and reliable technology services.

10. Manage telecommunications providers, managed service providers, and security vendors to ensure service quality and contractual compliance.

11. Lead the implementation and enhancement of Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), network segmentation, and secure access technologies