Khaled Zaky

Managing OFSI B-13 Through an ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management System. Financial institutions in Canada face increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, including those set by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OFSI). Among these, OFSI B-13 outlines specific expectations for operational risk management, governance, and resilience in federally regulated financial institutions. While OFSI provides the regulatory framework, ISO/IEC 27001 offers a structured methodology for managing information security risks that can effectively support compliance with B-13. Link: https://lnkd.in/ewyjGpbJ #ISO27001, #ISMS, #InformationSecurity, #InfoSec, #CyberSecurity, #ISO27001Certification, #DataProtection, #AnnexA, #ITAudit, #SecurityControls, #OSFI, #OperationalRisk, #OpRisk, #OperationalResilience, #BusinessContinuity, #BCP, #TPRM, #RegulatoryCompliance, #FinancialServicesCanada, #RiskAppetite, #GRC, #RiskManagement, #EnterpriseRiskManagement, #ERM, #ITRisk, #Compliance, #CyberResilience, #DigitalTransformation, #CorporateGovernance, #CISO, #CRO, #ComplianceOfficer, #RiskManager, #ITManager, #CybersecurityProfessional, #InternalAudit, #Consulting

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Honored to be a speaker and judge at #ProdCon hosted by the University of Waterloo’s UWPM club. The event was filled with great presentations and smart students seeking a career in Product Management. One question I got a lot was: “What can I do now to demonstrate product management skills and stand out to employers?” My advice: build a product-focused side project. Not a GitHub-heavy engineering showcase, but a product case study. Here’s how: • Identify a real user problem or an existing app/website that could be improved and that you use. • Deeply understand user needs and the job to be done. • Ideate on one core need and focus intensely in how it can be solved • Use Marty Cagan’s four-risk framework (value, usability, feasibility, business viability) to structure your thinking about how your idea’s quality, and validate against those risks. • Prototype with a vibe code tool like Lovable and create a simple architecture diagram to show how it could work. • Document your process: the problem, research, risks, prototype, your insights, your metrics on what success would look like. The best part is that you can start doing this today. Every tool you need to explore ideas, design prototypes, and document your thinking is already available to you right now. You don’t need to build everything from scratch to prove you can be a great PM. You need to show that you can deeply understand users, prioritize what matters, and turn insights into meaningful solutions that deliver real value. Thank you to UW Product Management Club for having me! Hope to see you next year 😁

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"For the second year in a row, Calgary recorded the fastest tech job growth rate among major North American hubs — proof of the city’s rising momentum as a global destination for technology and innovation." https://lnkd.in/gWf6vtgt

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New #aws compliance resource! The Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA) is a Canadian federal statute that was introduced to regulate payment service providers (PSPs) who operate in Canada. AWS customers can design and implement an AWS environment and use AWS services in a manner that satisfies their obligations under the RPAA. https://lnkd.in/e8UUwD4t

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Microsoft deepens its commitment to Canada — and the AI era accelerates 🇨🇦🤝🤖 Big news this week: Microsoft announced a $19B landmark investment in Canada’s AI future, expanding cloud capacity, supercomputing infrastructure, talent development, and responsible AI initiatives nationwide. 📣 Full announcement here: https://lnkd.in/gksqQ3Jt From my role working with technology partners across the Americas, this moment is bigger than infrastructure. It’s a signal that Canada is stepping firmly into the frontier of AI-enabled innovation—and that partners have a massive runway ahead to build, scale, and transform industries. Here’s what stands out through my lens: 🚀 1. This raises the ceiling for what partners can build: More capacity, more compute, more AI superclusters… this is the foundation partners need to deliver next-gen solutions, intelligent agents, industry copilots, and modern data platforms at scale. 🏢 2. Canada is becoming a global AI destination: This investment doesn’t just strengthen local capabilities—it positions Canada as a magnet for AI-driven companies, talent, and ecosystem innovation. The opportunity space for partners expands far beyond national borders. 🧩 3. The partner ecosystem becomes even more critical: As AI moves from experimentation to operations, customers are looking for trusted advisors who can guide transformation, redesign processes, and deliver measurable business outcomes. Partners are the force multiplier that will help every industry adopt responsibly and effectively. 🌐 4. This aligns perfectly with the shift toward Frontier Firms and Frontier Partners: Companies, Customers and Partners, that learn to operate with AI, deliver with AI, monetize with AI, and innovate with AI will define the next decade. Today’s announcement accelerates the timeline for every partner to take that leap. What excites me most is how this will empower organizations—large and small—to transform at a pace we’ve never seen before. And for those of us working across the ecosystem, it’s a generational chance to lead with purpose, innovation, and impact. The future isn’t just arriving. We’re building it. Together. #Microsoft #AI #Canada #PartnerEcosystem #Innovation #AITransformation #FrontierFirm #FrontierPartner #Cloud #Supercomputing #AIInnovation

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🚀 Weekly Canadian Tech Rundown: Some interesting activity across the Canadian tech ecosystem this week, and a few deals that caught my eye from a personal perspective. 🧠 AI + Cloud Efficiency Keeping Its Momentum Frugal AI’s US$5M Seed round stood out, cloud and AI workloads are only getting more expensive, so anything that helps teams understand and control spend is going to resonate. Clear painkiller category. Early signals that cost engineering is becoming its own SaaS layer. TISC’s US$2.1M Seed raise also popped up. Interesting space: AI-powered search for high-stakes, real-time decision environments. Still early, but I like seeing more Canadian teams push into deep workflow intelligence instead of just generic AI apps. 🩺 HealthTech Still a Durable Vertical MedReddie raised $1.6M to expand its medical procurement intelligence platform, love seeing more data-driven operational tools in healthcare. The sector’s slow, but when you crack it, the value is obvious. On the M&A side, FluidAI acquiring Emmetros is another signal that HealthTech consolidation is quietly picking up. Not the splashiest exits, but meaningful building blocks for the ecosystem. 🛍️ A Big Consumer Raise Too Huha Wear pulled in a massive US$20M round, outside the software world I usually think about, but always great to see Canadian brands scaling internationally. 📌 A Few Broader Signals I’m Watching Capital-efficient Seed rounds continue to be the norm. Enterprise AI is shifting from “hype” toward real workflow and infrastructure value. Regional ecosystems, Atlantic Canada in particular, keep showing momentum. HealthTech roll-ups seem to be accelerating under the radar. Lots of great founders building across the country right now. Always energizing to see these rounds come through each week. 🇨🇦🚀 #Canada #tech #ecosystem #venturecapital #startup

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We're going to Carleton University's job fair in February looking for junior engineers, and I'm keeping the job description vague on purpose. My take is that detailed job descriptions just attract better keyword matchers. When you list "Must have 3 years of experience with Kubernetes, Docker, Python, and React," you're optimising for people who are good at tailoring their CVs to match job postings. What you're screening out are people who might be brilliant but haven't ticked those exact boxes yet. We've always hired for critical thinking skills and a "do things the right way, not the fast way" mindset over specific technology experience. Mindset and critical thinking are very hard to teach. Technology is easy to teach by comparison. AI has made this even more true. Now that anyone can generate code, what matters is whether you can evaluate if that code is any good. Our junior engineers work directly with Fortune 50 customers. They contribute to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards. They get opportunities that would be impossible at a 5,000-person company with a rigid career ladder. But how do you put that in a posting without sounding like you're making empty promises? So I'm not going to try. I'll say "we do critical infrastructure work that secures millions of users, and you'll have more independence and impact than you'd get anywhere else." If that sounds vague and makes you anxious, you're probably not the right fit. If it sounds vague and makes you curious, we should talk. We've had people stay with us for 15 or 20 years. We treat people like humans, not "resources," and we give them room to grow in ways they couldn't elsewhere. The vagueness is the filter. The people who need a detailed checklist aren't looking for what we're offering. The people who see possibilities instead of requirements are exactly who we want.

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