Dr Lynette Drevin, Associate professor and subject chair at the School of Computer Science and Information Systems at the North West University (NWU) was awarded an IFIP Service Award during the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) General Assembly which was held from the 25th-28th June in Lisbon, Portugal
The IFIP is a multinational, apolitical organization in Information & Communications Technologies and sciences. It represents IT societies from 56 regions, covering five continents with a total membership of over half a million.
The service award is awarded to individuals who have invested years of dedication in their field and for their longevity and tenure with the IFIP.
“I am very honored and grateful to receive this award. It proves that team work and dedication leads to building stronger structures.”
She attended her first IFIP meeting in 1995 in Cape Town and has been actively involved ever since. She is specifically involved in the Information Security Education Working Group (IFIP WG 11.8) which is part of IFIP Technical Committee 11 focusing on Information Security and Privacy Protection.
She has been actively involved in IFIP WG11.8 in different roles over the years and is currently the Programme chair. Part of her duties involves constructing and distributing the Call-for-Papers as well as overseeing the selection of accepted papers, the reviewing and editing of the proceedings. (Since a few years back it is a Scopus listed output by Springer).
Their aims are to increase the trustworthiness and general confidence in information processing and to advance the state of computer security and information assurance education throughout the world in a forum where security and privacy protection experts work together.
Prof Drevin’s areas of expertise are Information Security awareness as well as research in the field of Information Systems failures. She developed an Information Security module for honours students many years ago. She also developed an undergraduate module that focuses on Information Security specifically because the NWU did not have one.
Prof Drevin is an alumnus of the NWU and received her Ph.D. at Middlesex University, UK. She started her PhD studies there when they lived just outside of London for two years.
“My passion lies in Information Security education and raising awareness of these matters especially because there are a lot of scams and threats in the cyber space.”
She also emphasizes the importance and value of team work and accentuates how nothing would be possible without the people that she works with.
“All glory goes to God for giving me the strength to keep going and overcoming challenges that are part of one’s journey. He is faithful.”
“I am grateful to my family for supporting and believing in me. I also would like to thank my colleagues as well as my IFIP working group members,” she adds.
Here is Prof Lynette Drevin with her husband Prof Gunther Drevin and the General chair of WISE Prof Lynn Futcher
