Mohammed A. Alshaghdali

ohammed A. Alshaghdali is the chief information security officer at Hala, one of the leading

Saudi startups in the financial technology industry under Saudi Central Bank regulations.

Back in 2019, Alshaghdali joined Hala to lead its cybersecurity section. During that time, he established the cybersecurity department following SAMA framework requirements and guidelines and National Cybersecurity Authority standards. In addition, he led the company’s licensing exercise, which succeeded in February 2020 in obtaining a SAMA license.

He was part of the coronavirus disease situation committee to manage all aspects of the pandemic; he successfully managed the new norm of

“remote working” associated with many cyberthreats.

In 2016, he joined Symantec, part of Broadcom International Inc., where he was country service delivery manager in Saudi Arabia, delivering different cybersecurity consultation and advisory services to some key telecom and banking establishments. Before that, he was the assigned delivery manager of the Saudi Telecom Co. cyber defense center.

Since Alshaghdali’s graduation from Hail University with a bachelor’s degree in computer education, he has worked in different roles including as a cybersecurity architecture specialist, network security specialist, and administration specialist, which provided him with a solid technical background.

During his career, he has obtained various certificates from different well-known institutions including the SANS Institute,

Cisco and Harvard.

In 2020, he was recognized by the Khaleej Times on its CISO Powerlist for Saudi Arabia. In 2018, he won first place in a competition held by SANS for incident response and hacking techniques. Alshaghdali is now pursuing his executive MBA degree at the University of Hail. He believes that “cybersecurity is not only a business enabler, it is a business partner.”