Azeez Razaq Adewale, who graduated from FUTA’s Fisheries and Wildlife Department in 2008, returns to his alma mater to receive an award for contributions to computing innovation, as his company Hexaguard Limited joins the conference as an official partner.
Azeez Razaq Adewale, an alumnus of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), has been presented with an award in recognition of his contributions to computing education, research, innovation and professional practice.
Adewale, who studied Fisheries and Wildlife Management at FUTA between 2003 and 2008, now leads Hexaguard Limited, a cybersecurity and technology company he founded with offices in Lagos and Gothenburg (Sweden), a trajectory that begins, in no small part, on a Nigerian federal university campus.
The award was presented by the School of Computing’s Annual Lecture Committee during FUTA’s 2nd Annual Lecture and 1st International Conference on Emerging Computing Applications and Technologies, held on 15-16 July 2026 at the Obafemi Awolowo Auditorium.
From Akure to Gothenburg to London
The path from a B.Tech in Agricultural Technology at FUTA to the leadership of an international cybersecurity firm is not a conventional one. Adewale traces it to a deliberate reorientation: following his 2008 graduation, he pursued a BSc in Communication Technology at the National Open University of Nigeria, before building a career that would eventually take him to corporate security roles in Lagos and Nairobi, a fintech platform in Mexico, and most recently to Sweden’s automotive technology sector, where he served as Senior Cybersecurity Consultant for Zeekr Technology Europe, the European engineering arm of Geely Group’s premium electric vehicle brand.
Today, Adewale holds two Masters degrees, including an MSc in Information Security and Digital Forensics from the University of East London, and credentials that include the CISSP, C|CISO, CCSP, PCI DSS Qualified Security Assessor, and the ISO/SAE 21434 Lead Auditor certification, one of the rarest qualifications in the global cybersecurity profession, governing the security of connected and autonomous road vehicles.
He is also a named member of the EC-Council ECIH Scheme Committee and the ISC2 CISSP Content Advisory Panel, placing him among the small group of professionals globally who help set the standards by which cybersecurity practitioners worldwide are trained and certified.
Hexaguard as conference partner
Beyond the individual recognition, the conference flyer confirms Hexaguard Limited as one of five official institutional partners of FUTA’s first international computing conference, alongside RiseNetworks, PrunEdge, Vesti, and Future Academy Africa. The partnership signals a deepening relationship between Nigerian academia and homegrown technology companies, building on the foundation laid by institutions like FUTA.
The conference theme: ‘From Artificial Intelligence Consumers to Creators: Preparing African Universities for the Global Intelligence Economy through Computing Education, Research and Industry Collaboration’, speaks directly to the kind of work Adewale has pursued: building technology products on the continent, for the continent, to international standards.
What Hexaguard has built
Hexaguard’s flagship product, CybaPulse, is an all-in-one compliance and risk management platform supporting forty-one international frameworks including ISO 27001, PCI DSS, GDPR, NIS2, DORA, and Nigeria’s own Data Protection Regulation (NDPR). It is built specifically to serve the compliance needs of African and emerging-market enterprises, organisations that have historically been priced out of the enterprise GRC tools available to their counterparts in Europe and North America.
A second product, Veriphye, is an AI-powered device verification and ownership protection platform designed to address mobile device theft and fraud in the West African market. At its December 2025 launch, The Guardian Nigeria described Veriphye as a critical layer of national digital safety infrastructure, a recognition that Adewale says reinforced his conviction that the problems worth solving are the ones closest to home.
“The issues I’ve spent my career addressing, compliance gaps in Nigerian financial institutions, device fraud in our informal economy, the absence of affordable security infrastructure for African enterprises, these are not niche problems,” Adewale said. “They are foundational. And they can only be properly addressed by people who understand them from the inside.”
Looking ahead
Adewale is currently preparing to expand Hexaguard’s operations into the United Kingdom, where CybaPulse is positioned for the regulated financial services, public sector, and government technology contractor markets.
The FUTA award and conference partnership, he says, are part of a longer story about what Nigerian technical talent, built here, tested globally, can contribute to the world.
| EVENT DETAILS Event: 1st International Conference on Emerging Computing Applications and Technologies & 2nd Annual Lecture Organiser: School of Computing, Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) Theme: From Artificial Intelligence Consumers to Creators Date: 15–16 July 2026 | Time: 10:00 AM Venue: Obafemi Awolowo Auditorium + School of Computing, FUTA Conference website: soclibrary.futa.edu.ng/soc-conference ABOUT HEXAGUARD LIMITED Hexaguard Limited is a cybersecurity and technology company with offices in Lagos, Gothenburg, and London. Developer of CybaPulse (enterprise GRC) and Veriphye (AI-powered device verification). hexaguard.ng | azeez@hexaguard.ng |
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