Joe Ruthven

Business Unit Executive

IBM Security Solutions - MEA

Biography

Joe Ruthven joined IBM in 1992 as a system engineer in the areas of OS/2 and IBM Personal Systems.

He quickly graduated to a technical sales role focusing on IBM Network Computing technologies and moved from technical sales to sales in 1999. During this period Joe was leading the WebSphere, Lotus and Rational brands for IBM in South Africa.

 

In 2006 Joe took the role of business development leader for Linux, Open Standards and SOA and successfully led SOA Sales for the IBM Software Group for the next few years. In November 2009 Joe accepted the role of Software Channel Sales Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa and in July 2010 also took the added responsibility of Software General Business sales leader.

Joe accepted the role of Business Unit Executive for IBM Security Solutions in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey in January 2012 and has been leading the business successfully in the region to date.

In this role Joe has been instrumental in assisting large financial institutions to adopt state of the art security solutions that is assisting these organizations to stay ahead of the ever-evolving cyber security threat. Key customers include Standard Bank, First National Bank, Nedbank, Riyadh Bank, Saudi British Bank, Yapi Kredi Bank, Garanti Bank, Zenith Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, First Gulf Bank, HSBC Turkey and more.

Key solutions adopted by these institutions include security operations and response, identify and access management, data security, mobility and end-point management as well anti-fraud solutions especially aimed at the online and retail banking environments.

Joe holds an Honors degree (Bachelors of Commerce) in Information Technology.

IBM Security

The IBM Security business unit consist of a team of technical and sales professionals who has the responsibility of providing end to end security solutions to IBM’s customer in the region.

IBM Security focus on 3 key offerings namely:

  • Security Transformation Services
  • Security Operations and Response
  • Information and Risk Protection
Speech Topic & Synopses
Security-as-a-service (Clean Pipe, Vulnerability Assessment, E-mail & Web as a Service, Etc..)