Meet #Unarine Manari, who started her internship in IT auditing with a German Telecommunication/IT company based in Midrand, South Africa, where her passion for IT was discovered.

Unarine Manari is an accomplished young professional in the fields of information and cybersecurity governance, information technology (IT) audit, IT risk and compliance.

She completed her matric at a commercial high school in Shayandima, Thohoyandou, proceeded to register for a BCom in accounting degree at a rural university, the University of Venda (UNIVEN) and graduated in 2014. In the same year, she started her internship in IT auditing with a German Telecommunication/IT company based in Midrand, South Africa, where her passion for IT was discovered. She decided to transition from accounting to IT and enrolled in a bridging CTA course. As she pursued this path, she seized various opportunities that allowed her to grow and build her skills and develop a keen interest in cybersecurity. She expanded her knowledge in this domain and assisted teams responsible for cybersecurity engagements, gaining valuable hands-on experience.

She is passionate about aligning IT and cybersecurity strategies and initiatives with businesses to ensure that they derive value from their investment in IT, ensuring compliance with industry frameworks, standards and regulations such as GDPR, POPIA, COBIT, ITIL, ISO27001 and PCI DSS among others. This spans internal and external operations within the public and private sectors. Her expertise in policy development, incident management, third-party security assessments, conducting cybersecurity workshops and writing newsletters have significantly strengthened the cyber resilience of the organisations she has had the privilege to be a part of.

She believes in sharing her knowledge and skills to help young professionals starting in the industry and encourages taking the initiative and adding value to every engagement.

She holds a BCom accounting degree from UNIVEN, a Postgraduate Diploma in internal auditing from the University of South Africa and an incomplete MPhil in IT governance that she intends to finish at the North-West University next year. She further holds multiple certifications, which include CISA, ITIL, ISO22301 and CC and is currently pursuing CRISC and ISO27001 as she is committed to professional growth and excellence in the cybersecurity governance space and IT as a whole.