New York - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been named one of the CSO50 Award winners for 2021, for demonstrating outstanding innovation and business value. 

The prestigious award is given out annually to the top 50 cybersecurity units worldwide, across all industries.  This year’s award marks the 6th time that UNDP has won, which is more than any other organization since the award was established.

UNDP's winner entry was "Upgrading the cyber-incident response program to world class status to support the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Digital Transformation". The UNDP cybersecurity unit undertook a project to improve its cyber-incident response capabilities to support digital transformation, improve employee cybersecurity awareness and transform the cybersecurity unit to world class status. 
 
"These improvements answer some of the most important challenges facing security leaders today: protecting the organization's reputation, finances and productivity from cyber-attacks", said Paul Raines, Chief Information Security Officer at UNDP. "Winning this award reflects UNDP's commitment to excellence and following industry best practices in cybersecurity". 

The CSO award judges, who evaluated a highly competitive field of nominations, recognized the UNDP project’s outstanding business value and thought leadership. 

The awards are scored according to a uniform set of criteria by a panel of judges that includes security leaders, industry experts, and academics. It is an opportunity for security leaders to share with their peers the risk and security innovations that led the way to greater success for their organizations. Other award winners for 2021 include Accenture, Allstate, Cisco, FedEx, Intel, Saudi Aramco, Verizon and Zoom.