Chief Cybersecurity Expert.
Ms. Goderdzishvili provides 15 years of professional experience, out of which 11 years dedicated work on the topics of cybersecurity, digital transformation, ICT policy, ICT regulatory and legal frameworks, information security policies and standards, strategy development and implementation. She has all relevant legal know-how concerning the EU legislation, national ICT/e-governance legislation, good practices and legal technics and skills on EU legal acquis transformation into national legislation. Ms. Goderdzishvili has in-depth knowledge of the specific legal and regulatory reforms in cybersecurity for the countries in transition due to her extensive professional experience in similar processes in Georgia.
Ms. Goderdzishvili is the only Georgian and among few foreign experts holding the SANS Institute’s Global Information Assurance Certificate in Legal Issues in Information Technology & Security (2013-2021).
Ms. Goderdzishvili has worked in governmental, non-government, international, and private organizations. While holding a Chief Cybersecurity mandate within the Data Exchange Agency and Digital Governance Agency of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia, she chaired cybersecurity legal and policy drafting process in Georgia, with her direct contribution, Georgia adopted legal framework on information and cyber security, critical infrastructure protection, privacy and personal data protection, three sets of Georgian nation-wide cyber security strategies/action plans and numerous policy and analytical papers. She is well versed in strategic and regulatory issues related to IT and technology use in the public sector and society at large. This includes cybersecurity governance, critical infrastructure protection, incident handling standards, information sharing platforms, etc. She is well-capable to combine human, organizational and process elements of cybersecurity– which is a rare combination of skills. She is an author and co-author of various policy recommendations and analysis, reports, articles, and presentations in the field.
Nata has years of working experience with cybersecurity professional communities, leading initiatives of cooperation between public, private and academic stakeholders within the scope of Cybersecurity Forum of Georgia, ICT Business Council, as few examples. Nata successfully accomplished the very first attempts of establishing cooperative relationships between international projects and public-private cybersecurity stakeholders. Because of her interpersonal skills and communication tactics, she was always in charge of organizing multi-stakeholder cybersecurity events and forums. Examples of this statement are cybersecurity strategy development interactions organized in the periods of 2017-2018-2019 years under the umbrella of UK Donor support. Nata was the key liaison for UK Embassy and British experts when dealing with Georgian public and private cyber stakeholders. Moreover, she was the lead expert drafting the national cybersecurity strategy of Georgia who worked with UK technical team, she was in charge of ensuring that recommendations provided by the experts were dully reflected in the Georgian draft of the document. Last but not least, at Nata’s invitation and local facilitation by the British Embassy in Tbilisi, the Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre (GCSCC) has conducted a review of cybersecurity capacity of Georgia. The CMM Georgian report proved to be largely instrumental as objective evidence for consecutive work on cybersecurity strategy of Georgia.
Importantly, Ms. Nata Goderdzishvili is very experienced in high-level political communication (She advices on e-government and security issues political decision makers of foreign governments) and has useful skills in high-level leadership and communication. She is well standing on international forums as an invited expert and speaker for EU, CoE, OSCE, UN, NATO and other high level conferences and events. She has coordinated several donor-funded international projects and has led work packages in other projects. As chief liaison officer with the international community, Ms. Goderdzishvili has paved the way for partnerships with multiple foreign delegations, including: USA, Austria, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Finland, UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
For the last couple of years when Covid Pandemic made cyber awareness a key necessity for the information society of Georgia, Nata has delivered cyber hygiene and capacity building trainings to different target groups (general public, municipal employees, public servants, NGOs, journalists) throughout whole Georgia, in both large and small cities and rural areas, including in conflict zones. During the trainings, she always incorporates sensitive societal topics, including how vulnerable special target groups (e.g. gender, minorities, etc) are in the online world and how to best mitigate the risks and threats addressed to the most vulnerable members of society.