Speakers

Mehran Koushkebaghi, Head of Product Security, Nationwide Building Society

Mehran is an accomplished certified engineer with over 15 years of experience in IT security and engineering, spanning across finance, construction, and publication industries. Currently, he holds the position of Head of Product Security at the Nationwide Building Society. Mehran emphasises the systemic nature of security concerns, stressing the need for a comprehensive... understanding of all system components. He has been instrumental in advocating secure-by-design software and implementing effective security controls in the initial phases of the development lifecycle. Mehran's educational background includes two MSc degrees, one in computer science and another in management and is currently pursuing a third MSc in systems thinking. In his free time, Mehran takes online courses to sharpen his technical skills, listens to audiobooks and writes blogs.more

Peter Smith, Chief Information Security Officer, Allica Bank

Peter is an experienced Information Security leader with 10+ years of leading teams and optimising cybersecurity for enterprises, with 4+ years in FinTech. He translates industry risks into ambitious technology roadmaps and robust security programs

Adam Avards, Principal for Cyber and Third Party Risk Policy, UK Finance

Adam Avards joined UK Finance in 2022 as Principal for Cyber and Third Party Risk Policy. He leads UK Finance’s engagement on the Critical Third Party regulatory pathway and chairs a number of industry forums and committees on Third Party Risk Management, Cyber Security and Cloud. Before joining UK Finance, Adam spent over 15 years within the UK’s Intelligence... Community, dealing with both physical and digital security, operations and policy.more

Praveen Singh, Head of IT Risk and Cybersecurity, ICBC Standard Bank

Praveen heads up the IT Risk and Cybersecurity at ICBC Standard Bank. He has spent over 20 years in the financial services sector, including 10 years in management consulting in UK, US, Europe, China and India..  He likes to speak about technology, risk, regulation, cybersecurity and transformation. He is also a fan of Formula 1 and cricket.
 

Bec McKeown, CPsychol, Mind Science

Bec McKeown is a Chartered Psychologist with twenty years’ experience of researching and evaluating human performance in high-risk, high-stakes organisations, including the UK Ministry of Defence.  The knowledge and insights gained from this research has given Bec a unique perspective on the ways humans behave when working in complex, uncertain and ambiguous... environments.  She is an experienced speaker and thought leader on the psychology of human performance in cybersecurity.In 2019, Bec established Mind Science, an organization dedicated to assisting companies at both operational and strategic levels. Her primary focus is to reduce risk and enhance resilience for teams operating in complex environments. She does this by leveraging psychological principles to enhance situational awareness, decision-making, problem-solving and building high-performing teams.  With a proven track record, Bec continues to make significant contributions in shaping the landscape of human performance psychology.more

Gill Fenney, Head of IT Risk Governance, Bupa

Gill has had a long career in IT working across financial, retail and services sectors, initially in technical roles but with the last 17 or so years specialising in Information Security. She has worked as a consultant running compliance programmes such as SOx, ISO 27001 and PCIDSS for various companies during this time. She is now Head of IT Risk Governance for Bupa.

Manit Sahib, Ethical Hacker & Former Head of Penetration Testing & Red Teaming, Bank of England

Manit is an experienced offensive security expert who is certified by UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) as well as His Majesty’s CESG Check scheme (HMG CHECK). He has over ten years professional experience in both UK Government and private offensive security operations. Formerly, Manit was the Head of Penetration Testing & Red Teaming at the... Bank of England. He is contracted to Global Fund.more

Orlando Fernandez, Senior Technical Specialist at the Recovery, Resolution & Resilience team, Prudential Policy Directorate, Bank of England (BoE)

Orlando Fernández is a Senior Technical Specialist at the Recovery, Resolution and Resilience team in the Prudential Policy Directorate of the Bank of England (BoE). He has been with the BoE working on a range of policy areas for 13 years. 
In his current role, Orlando focuses on cyber, operational resilience and third-party risk management. In that capacity,... Orlando was one of the key architects of the upcoming new regime for critical third parties to the UK financial sector, which was developed jointly by the BoE/Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA); and PRA Supervisory Statement on ‘Outsourcing and third-party risk management’ (SS2/21).
On the international front, Orlando has represented the BoE at the Financial Stability Board (FSB) where he was a major contributor to the third party risk management toolkit for financial authorities and financial institutions published in 2023. Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, where he was part of the expert group that developed the draft Principles for the sound management of third-party risk published earlier this year. European Banking Authority (EBA) expert group that produced the 2019 Guidelines on Outsourcing. 
In his previous role at the Bank/PRA Orlando played a leading role in the development of the BoE/PRA’s policy on corporate governance and individual accountability, namely the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR).
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Marcus Corry, Director, Tech&Ops, AFME

Marcus leads on Operational Resilience and Cyber Security policy at AFME, covering both EU and UK developments relating to wholesale capital markets. Current priorities include the EU’s milestone Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the Commission’s Cyber Security Package, encompassing the proposed Cyber Resilience Act and the ENISA Cyber Security Certification... Schemes.

The current role builds on over 10 years’ experience in Digital Finance regulatory affairs, working with the full range of financial services market participants on how to respond to the challenges and opportunities of digitalisation. This has included time in both London and Brussels, engaging closely with EU and UK officials on how Regulation can better reflect changing consumer/client behaviours and provide a secure environment for innovation.

Marcus has a legal background, with an LLM from UCL and has previously worked for legal self-regulator, the Law Society.more

Michael Jefferson, Head of Financial Services Public Policy UK, Middle East, Africa and Switzerland, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Michael Jefferson is head of Financial Services Public Policy UK, Middle East, Africa and Switzerland at AWS. He also covers Financial Stability Board (FSB) engagement. Michael leads on policy and engagement for issues relating to adoption and use of cloud across the finance sector. He has experience working in technology, investment banking, trade associations and... the UK Government. Before joining AWS, he led on capital markets policy at the Investment Association and prior to that at UK Finance, representing the UK-based banking and finance industry. Previously, he was head of Public Policy EMEA at Nomura and spent the early part of his career as a UK civil servant working on international trade and business issues, including working in the office of the UK Minister for Trade and Investment.
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Alistair Wardell, Director, Cloud Security, Deutsche Bank

Alistair heads up the Cloud Security Tribe within Deutsche Bank’s Chief Security Office. He leads a range of squads that implement and operate security controls for the Bank’s public cloud environments. He has previously worked in information security in the insurance, telco and government sectors.

Haydn Brooks, CEO, Risk Ledger

Originally a big 4 cyber risk consultant Haydn experienced the day to issues that came with running a supply chain assurance programme. He found that current programmes were far from frictionless and actively caused clients and their suppliers' headaches.These pain points led him to found Risk Ledger. Risk Ledger is a technology platform that combines... a security governance platform with a secure social network. Now one full-time employee can run an entire assurance programme for over 1000 vendors, quickly see where their supply chain concentration risks are and identify potential third-party vulnerabilities.In the last couple of years, Risk Ledger has gone from strength to strength, receiving 2.1 million in seed funding, winning the Cyber Den/Most Innovative Cyber Company Award and being named as one of Forbes’ Tech Champions of 2022. In addition, Haydn was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. more

Siân John MBE, Chief Technology Officer, NCC Group

Global cyber security expert, NCC Group welcomes Siân John as Chief Technology Officer.With 25 years of cyber security experience across strategy, business risk, privacy, and technology, Siân will drive innovation, insights and intelligence at NCC Group, defining the future direction of services through close interaction with clients, industry, and academia.As part... of the Executive Committee, Siân will lead the Group’s Commercial Research, Threat Intelligence and Commercial Product Management teams – central to the Group’s strategic goals of growing its global position and reputation as the first choice, go-to cyber security expert.A recognised cyber security thought leader and strategist, Siân joins NCC Group from Microsoft and is the current Chair of techUK’s Cyber Security Management committee and a council member for EPSRC, the funding body for Engineering and Physical Sciences Research in the UK.Siân John, comments: “I’m excited to be joining such a highly respected organisation as NCC Group and look forward to working with colleagues to continue to innovate our offerings to help our clients deal with the modern security challenges they face in our digitally transformed world.”Mike Maddison, CEO, NCC Group comments: “It’s with great pleasure that we welcome Siân to the Group and our Executive Committee. Siân’s experience and passion for cyber security alongside a real focus on making a difference to our clients and wider society fit perfectly with our purpose and vision for the future.”more

Chris Greany, Director of Security, Pay UK - on behalf of NCC Group

Chris has held senior positions in the public, commercial and consulting sectors, with a career spanning over 35 years.Most recent roles include building enterprise and cyber security programs in the financial and oil & gas sectors, leading the UK policing response to economic and financial crime and supporting the development of “Cyber UK”.  As Managing... Director with Templar Executives Ltd he has led the growth of its EMEA information risk consulting practice.An accomplished speaker, media commentator and thought leader he is a founding partner of the Global Cyber Alliance and was a former member of the Bank of England’s Cyber Security Board. Published, his most recent work on insider threats is contained in “Managing Cyber Security Risk 3” with Jonathan Reuvid Books (2019)A vocal advocate on the need to improve the UK response to counter cyber fraud, AML, and financial crime, he still advises the UK Government and International Authorities on the development of their existing and future policies to prevent and respond to these type of threats.more

Rory Malone, Principal, Global Privacy & Security Regulatory Compliance, Cloudflare

Steven Wills, Senior Engineer, Abnormal Security

Steven Wills, a Senior Engineer at Abnormal Security, brings extensive expertise in AI-driven cybersecurity. With over 15 years in the industry, Steven excels in developing robust solutions to combat sophisticated threats. His dedication and innovative approach play a crucial role in protecting organisations from evolving cyber risks.

Brett Ayres, VP of Product, Teneo

Brett Ayres is VP of Product for Teneo. He has over 16 years of experience working with customers on network and security transformation projects, balancing technical, operational, and commercial requirements to deliver secure, optimised, and highly visible networks. Brett has held a range of commercial and technical roles during his time with Teneo. Recently he has... enhanced Teneo’s offerings by adding next-generation security solutions to the portfolio, designed to secure remote workforces accessing hybrid networks within a Zero Trust architecture. more

Nick Palmer, Senior Solutions Engineer, Censys

Nick Palmer is a security IT professional with over two decades of experience in Information Technology and Cyber Security. Nick is a cyber security technologist, security advocate and business problem solver. Previously he has worked for a variety of industry leading companies including: Attivo, Microsoft, TrapX Security, HP. In his role with the technology team... at Censys, he helps customers uncover threats and vulnerabilities before they become risks.more

Yonatan Khen, Security Research Team Leader, Hunters

Yonatan is an experienced Security Researcher with over 7 years of expertise in attack research and analysis of data in both the private and public sectors. Before joining Hunters, he served at a Security Consultant Firm and the Israeli Air Force. Currently, he is working as Security Research Team Lead at Hunters' Team Axon