Alan Gray is the Head of National Cyber Security and Resilience for The Scottish Government. A Security leader with over 15 years of experience within government, professional and public sector organisations, Alan has managed a wide range of security activities from strategic capability development to operational response. Previously as Chief Information Security Officer for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, with responsibility for the cyber security of all core technologies and services both at home and across posts and embassies worldwide, he was also a member of the Government Security Board as representative for the CISO community across government. Drawing on past experience in National Security, academia, central government and the private sector, Alan has joined the Scottish Government to drive the consolidation and expansion of Scotland’s cyber security and cyber resilience activities, and to lead the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3). 

Alex Murray grew up around the world as an army child and graduated from Birmingham University in 1996.  His partner is a sign language interpreter, and they have three children.  Initially in West Midlands Police he worked in CID and uniform roles in the cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton. He has been a senior investigating officer and has experience within Counter Terrorism.   In 2008 he obtained a Masters from Cambridge University with a thesis that developed the understanding of police legitimacy within Muslim communities.   He has been a specialist firearms, public order and CT commander.  He was temporary ACC Crime in West Midlands for three years leading crime investigations, forensics, criminal justice and intelligence.  He then became Commander, Specialist Crime in the Met leading teams specialising in cyber, human trafficking, child abuse and economic crime.    In 2021/2022 he led on the policing of violence in London in response to heightened levels of teenage homicide.    He has been the Chief Constable (Temp) of West Mercia Police delivering a people-led, tech-enabled, crime fighting vision of policing and is now Director of Threats at the National Crime Agency.   He is also the UK Policing lead for artificial intelligence. He is the founder of the Society of Evidence Based Policing and has worked on police training programmes in India, Cambodia and Europe.  In 2017 he was awarded an OBE. 

Zibby is the previous Head of Information Security at Heineken UK, vCISO in the shadows for many well-known brands, and now Chief Information Security Officer at Arnold Clark. Over the past 25 years in Scotland, Zibby progressed from electronics, through securing digital networks, and research in privacy-preserving cryptographic techniques, to helping secure some of the biggest organisations in banking, manufacturing, retail and public sector. On this journey Zibby has inspired further development of covert-channel analysis and cryptographic solutions, assisted in forming one of the first Cyber Security Operations Centres in UK banking, and designed data tokenisation solutions. Zibby continues collaborating with businesses, industry and academia on all things cyber, privacy and digital business resilience. 

Cyber Innovation & Skills Leadership: Educating, Empowering, and Strengthening Organisational Cyber Resilience 

Katie O’Neill has recently been appointed as Head of Skills Academy at the Cyber and Fraud Centre – Scotland as part of the organisation’s efforts to further develop on and offline resilience training for organisations of all sizes.  Katie has extensive experience in cybercrime training and educational strategy, having worked with Police Scotland for 17 years, delivering advanced training programmes to equip law enforcement personnel with the critical skills required to investigate cybercrime, analyse digital evidence, and address emerging cyber threats. The Cyber Skills Academy is a dedicated resource within The Cyber Fraud Centre Scotland, designed to strengthen cyber resilience across all levels of workforce. Offering a range of educational and skills-based sessions, the Academy provides practical and strategic insights into managing cyber threats and fraud. 

With over 10 years’ experience in IT, Jessica is responsible for all Operational Security Services at FTSE 100 member, The Weir Group. Having graduated Abertay University in 2020 with a first-class honours degree in Ethical Hacking Jessica has delivered security transformation in global organisations and has experience across both offensive and defensive cyber roles, all with an underlying focus on threat intelligence. 

In order to continue the advancement towards digitization, Scotland perhaps needs to develop a roadmap for the integration of digital trust, identity and wallets, and in how data is shared across the public sector, especially in areas of health and social care. This, as much as possible, should be focused on the citizen, and aim to integrate with other evolving systems around the world, and respect privacy. Along with this, the evolution of new methods such as with homomorphic encryption could provide the public sector with the opportunity to better understand the demographics of the population, while supporting privacy-aware machine learning.

William (Bill) J Buchanan OBE FRSE  is a Professor of Applied Cryptography in the School of Computing, Edinburgh and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University. He is a Fellow of the BCS and a Principal Fellow of the HEA. Bill was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cybersecurity, and,  in 2024, he was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).  His social media tagline reflects his strong belief in changing the world for the better: “A Serial Innovator. An Old World Breaker. A New World Creator.” Bill also has a strong belief in the power of education and in supporting innovation from every angle and currently leads the Blockpass ID Lab and the Centre for Cybersecurity, IoT and Cyberphysical.   Bill works in the areas of cryptography, blockchain, trust and digital identity. He has one of the most extensive cryptography sites in the World (asecuritysite.com), and is involved in many areas of novel research and teaching.  He has published over 30 academic books and over 450 academic research papers. Along with this, Bill’s work has led to many areas of impact, including a number of highly successful spin-out companies (including Zonefox, Symphonic Software and Cyan Forensics), along with awards for excellence in knowledge transfer and for teaching. He recently received an ”Outstanding Contribution to Knowledge Exchange” award and was included in the FutureScot “50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World”, along with being a regular keynote speaker at a range of conferences. Bill’s true academic passion is building, analysing and breaking cryptographic methods. 

Alison is a recognised Digital leader in Scotland with a wealth of experience of many ground-breaking digital programmes across the public sector.  She has worked with many organisations across the Justice sector including Disclosure Scotland, Scottish Prison Service, Scottish Courts and Crown Office.  Her experience also includes a 2.5 year secondment as Head of the Digital Transformation Division of the SG Digital Directorate, during which she was involved in the Digital Justice DESC programme.

Alison is a former Chair of ScotlandIS and now works as a digital transformation strategist working with public and private sector to drive digitally enabled change.  

From the public to the private sectors and back again, Scott has worked in information and cyber security for over 20 years. Having held CISO positions in the private sector, he joined NHS NSS in 2020 and leads the mission to deliver a world class cyber security operations capability for Scotland’s Health Sector. He is excited by the opportunities that new technologies and ways of working bring to society and an advocate of cohesive security strategies to exploit these opportunities safely.

Maggie is an extremely experienced and respected Leader, Board member and Advisor. She worked within law enforcement for over 30 years and then a further 5 years in the Finance sector most recently as Director Intelligence and Incident Response at Lloyds Banking Group.  She combines the unique blend of a senior private sector career with the highest level of international law enforcement management.  Maggie provides an unparalleled sociopolitical awareness matched with commercial expertise and is a strong advocate for new and emerging sectors and skills.  She is a mentor and advocate for promoting diversity in cyber skills. 

Following a 32 year career in policing which included leading cyber investigations in 2013 Keith joined the Scottish Government to support the development of cyber policy and strategy. In November 2015 the Scottish Government launched Safe, Secure, Prosperous a Cyber Strategy for Scotland which was followed in 2021 by The Strategic Framework for a Cyber Resilient Scotland.

Keith was responsible for establishing the Cyber Scotland Partnership a collaborative leadership approach to focus efforts on improving cyber resilience across Scotland. Keith is the Response Lead within the newly formed Scottish Cyber Co-ordination Centre (SC3), a collaborative function supporting combatting the accelerating threat of cyber attack to Scotland.