Congratulations to Saquib Saifee, M.S. '23, on receiving a Rising Star Professional Award from ISC2! In the article "ISC2 Announces 2026 Global Achievement Award Recipients," ISC2 announced the recipients of its Global Achievement Awards, which honor individuals' contributions to the cybersecurity field. In the ISC2 Professional Awards category, Saifee, CISSP, Software Security Engineer at IBM, was the early-career professional who received the Rising Star Award for the Americas region, in addition to two others from the Asia and Europe regions.
Here is an excerpt from his bio: "His contributions extend beyond IBM. He is a named contributor to CISA's Framing Software Component Transparency and participated in the agency's BOMOps Tiger Team. He also contributes to OWASP CycloneDX and the OWASP GenAI Security Project, helping advance the standards, tools, and practices used by security professionals worldwide."
Read the full article on the ISC2 website.
For more from Saifee, check out the article "GW Alumnus Presents at Cybersecurity Conference" in GW Today, which recaps the two talks he delivered at BSides Las Vegas 2026.
Here is an excerpt: "Saifee’s technical talk examined how to securely build and use Model Context Protocol servers, which connect AI applications to external tools and data. His second talk shared strategies for students and early-career professionals navigating the competitive cybersecurity job market."