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