Telenor Pakistan Secures No.1 Position in Cybersecurity Excellence for Third Consecutive Year

Telenor Pakistan has done it again. The operator has secured the number-one position in cybersecurity excellence for the third consecutive year at the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s Telecom Cyber Security Awards 2026 — a hat-trick that cements its reputation as the country’s most security-conscious mobile network.

The recognition, announced at a ceremony in Islamabad, places Telenor Pakistan — which operates as a brand of Pak Telecom Mobile Limited (PTML) — at the top of the industry’s benchmark for cyber threat defence, information security and network resilience for the third year running.

The award and the ceremony

The Telecom Cyber Security Awards 2026 are hosted by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and judged through the regulator’s own audit process. This year’s top honour in cybersecurity excellence went to Telenor Pakistan after it recorded one of the highest compliance scores in the industry.

Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja presented the award to PTML Chief Technology Officer Awais Vohra and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Shan Haq. The ceremony was attended by senior government officials, the PTA Chairman, and leaders from the telecommunications and technology industries.

“We are thrilled to secure the top position for the third consecutive year,” the company’s chief technology officer said on receiving the award, describing it as a reflection of the team’s sustained focus on protecting customer data and network systems.

What the award actually measures

Unlike popularity contests, the PTA award follows a rigorous audit and revalidation process. Operators are assessed against the Critical Telecom Data and Infrastructure Security Regulations (CTDISR) — the regulatory framework designed to protect the country’s essential telecom infrastructure from emerging cyber threats.

Telenor Pakistan’s win means it demonstrated one of the highest compliance rates in the industry with those standards: how customer data is stored and guarded, how network systems are hardened against intrusion, and how quickly the operator can detect and respond to incidents. The award, in the PTA’s framing, recognises steadfast regulatory compliance and the protection of critical telecom data and infrastructure.

That matters more than it sounds. Telecom networks carry everything from mobile banking and government services to emergency communications — a breach at the network level can ripple across the entire digital economy.

A three-year winning streak

This is not a one-off. Telenor Pakistan first took the top accolade in the Cellular Mobile Operators category at the Telecom Cyber Security Awards 2024, held in Islamabad, where then-CEO Khurrum Ashfaque accepted the award in the presence of the Minister of State for IT and Telecom and the PTA Chairman.

It followed that up in 2025, securing the number-one position for the second consecutive year — again presented by Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja to Awais Vohra and Shan Haq after the PTA’s annual audit and revalidation. The 2026 win completes the hat-trick: three straight years at the top of the industry’s cybersecurity rankings.

Consistency is the point the company wants to make. One good audit can be luck; three consecutive number-one finishes, across changing threat landscapes and tightening regulations, suggest a security culture rather than a security campaign.

Why it matters for subscribers

For ordinary mobile users, the award is a signal about what happens behind the scenes of their daily calls, messages and mobile data sessions. As Pakistan’s digital economy grows more connected — and as cyber attacks grow more sophisticated — the security posture of the network itself becomes as important as the security of any single app.

The timing is notable. Just days earlier, on 22 October, Ufone and Telenor Pakistan joined the PTA for an executive workshop on Zero Trust security — the first industry-regulator partnership of its kind in Pakistan’s telecom sector — and the PTA chairman has publicly warned that the country is a prime, round-the-clock target for cyber attacks, with citizens routinely facing fraudulent calls and fake messages.

Against that backdrop, the operator now running both the Ufone and Telenor networks under PTML has a simple message for its subscribers: the network protecting your data is officially the best-defended in the country — three years in a row.

Read also: PTA Announces 120-Day Tax-Free Mobile Registration for Overseas Pakistanis

Read also: PTA Dark Web Watch Logged 326 Cyber Threats in a Year

Sources: Lead Pakistan, 247News