Oliver Wyman appoints global head of cyber risk

Oliver Wyman, a global management consulting firm and a business of Marsh McLennan (NYSE: MMC), has appointed Souheil Moukaddem as the new head of its Cyber Risk platform.

In the global role, seasoned strategy leader Souheil will head the development of solutions in the field of Cyber Risk – utilizing the breadth and depth of expertise and capability across Oliver Wyman, which employs 6,000 professionals in 30 countries around the world, to deliver breakthrough client impact.

The strengthening of Oliver Wyman’s Cyber Risk Platform directly responds to fast-evolving client needs, and includes collaboration between Oliver Wyman and the full suite of capabilities across the Marsh McLennan ecosystem, which incorporates insurance and risk management consultancy Marsh, economic consultancy NERA, and human capital expertise from Mercer, among other specialist businesses.

“Cyber Risk is a dynamic and fast-moving domain, which in turn requires smart, responsive action – Oliver Wyman and the wider Marsh McLennan group has the breadth and depth of expertise to deliver the right solutions for our clients across both the private and public sector. We are delighted that Souheil will add his 30+ years of experience to helping corral the best of our firm’s capabilities to meet our clients’ most important challenges and opportunities,” says Michael Zeltkevic, the Global Head of Capabilities at Oliver Wyman.

Souheil, who has decades of experience in supporting private and public sector clients in both the U.S. and the Middle East, has overseen the design, build, and implementation of large cybersecurity programs.

Cyber Risk as a platform encompasses capabilities and issues such as cyber security, cyber analytics, cyber threats, cybercrime, cyber espionage, and cyber recovery.

Souheil says, of the growing cyber threat: “The question is no longer whether entities and individuals will get hacked, it is a matter of when they will get hacked, and how they will respond. These are all reasons why we are strengthening our cyber capabilities at Oliver Wyman, in support of our clients. Our rigorous approach looks at the Cyber Risk challenge holistically, covering technology, insurance, resilience, business processes, analytics, human capital, and human behavior.”    

“From individual and institutional ransomware attacks to the shut down or manipulation of operations and/or physical systems, cyber attacks can have devastating consequences on an entity’s brand and its ability to sustain its operations, or worse, they can result in direct physical harm to humans.”

In addition to his global role, Souheil is a partner in Communications, Media and Technology across Oliver Wyman’s India, Middle East & Africa (IMEA) region and a member of the business’s IMEA Executive Management Committee. Coming from an engineering background, he has experience in developing and managing strategy, organization, and human capital projects, as well as implementing large transformation programs for government and commercial clients in the United States and the Middle East.

Prior to joining Oliver Wyman, he was Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Booz Allen Hamilton’s Middle East and North Africa business, which was acquired by Oliver Wyman in 2022. Before that, he established another global strategy consulting firm in the region. He also held the role of Chief Strategy Officer at a private equity firm, with projects ranging from the Middle East to Malaysia. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University. He is fluent in English, Arabic, and French.