Donavan Cheah (donavancheah)

Donavan is a Physics graduate turned into cybersecurity consultant with >8 years of experience in a variety of cybersecurity domains (e.g. offensive security, threat modeling, maturity assessments, security architecture) and business domains (cyber GRC).

He blends his understanding of clients across both public and private sectors to identify key cybersecurity concerns and solutions to enable companies' cybersecurity compliance, confidence and cost-effectiveness (3 Cs).

He has numerous contributions to the cybersecurity community since 2018. He has written hacking challenges, spoken at numerous conferences and events (SECCON JP, Threat Modeling Connect Japan, GCC 2025 @ Taiwan, Seasides 2025 @ Goa, SINCCON @ Singapore, DefCamp @ Romania) on topics ranging from threat modeling to application security. He has conducted career talks to encourage younger students from middle school to university levels to enter the cybersecurity industry. He also sits on the advisory board of VULNCON (since 2024), BSides Mumbai and Vazig, and has authored numerous articles on ISACA on topics ranging from post-quantum cryptography, to the relations between social sciences and cybersecurity as well as threat modelling.

His views on cybersecurity has also been quoted by "The Pentester Blueprint" written by Phillip L. Wylie and Kim Crawley, and Offensive Security. He also contributes to the ISC2's Unified Body of Knowledge (UBK) through the Technical Advisory Panel Workshop.

In Thales, he has also led a team to create a made in Singapore cybersecurity gamification experience, "Defend the Breach" (DTB), in three months, where players role-play CISO roles to make difficult cybersecurity decisions, taking into account both cyber and non-cyber factors such as the overall health of the business, manpower and operational requirements.

Donavan also possesses certifications ranging from Offsec certifications (OSCE3, OSCP), ISC2 (CISSP), ISACA (CRISC) and is more than halfway through his Masters in Cybersecurity at Georgia Tech (OMSCY).

On the mentorship front, he has developed and helped two mentees secure jobs, and mentors a dozen mentees in various capacities (individuals, cyber start-up founders)

Outside cybersecurity, Donavan has also represented Singapore in international forums such as the ASEAN-India Youth Summit as a delegate.

Find out more about me at https://donavan.sg and my cybersecurity writing at https://donavan.sg/blog.