Dr Amir Abdul Samad

Head Cyber and Chief Information Security Officer
PETRONAS
Malaysia

Dr Amir is the Head of Cyber Security within the PETRONAS Group of Companies. He has been in the Information Technology (IT) and Cyber Security space for more than 25 years and considered one of the prominent IT professionals in Malaysia. He has demonstrated excellent history of working in the oil & energy industry and his focus is on Enterprise Software, Enterprise Architecture, IT Strategy and Data Center. He graduated with a BA and MA (Computer Science) back in 1988 from Boston University, USA. Due to his profound passion in Computer Science, Dr Amir continued his academic journey and obtained his PhD from the same University in the year 1993. His thesis is on “Polynomial Time Algorithms For Bounds On The Expected Capacity Of Stochastic Networks”. Before heading the Cyber Security team, he held various key roles within PETRONAS Digital, namely as Head of Common Support Services in the Operations team, and Application Enterprise Architecture lead. Early in his career, he spent approximately 10 years with Microsoft as Principal Consultant and Regional Application Architect. Dr Amir is also a Certified TOGAF9 which is a certificate in Enterprise Architecture methodology and framework to improve business efficiency. In his free time, Dr Amir unleash his passion in IT through home automation using Raspberry PI and connects himself to nature by growing herbs hydroponically.