Cyber Security

Ciara is the Head of Cyber at ScotlandIS and the cluster manager for Scotland’s cyber cluster. Her role involves supporting the development, growth and promotion of the Cyber security sector in Scotland, bringing the cyber community together across academia, public sector and industry including start-ups and investors in order to enable collaboration and innovation in this sector in addition to facilitating gaps or challenges to be addressed.
Ciara has extensive experience in the telecommunications and cyber security industry, having worked for BT for 20 years before freelancing for a cyber security start-up while completing a MBA at Heriot Watt Business School.
She joined ScoltandIS in August 2019 to take her current role of Head of Cyber.

Since joining Sophos in 2011 Jon has enjoyed numerous roles from Channel Manager via Firewall Specialist to sales engineer. In his current role, Jon brings his passion for all things cybersecurity to the presentation stage talking about all the wonderful technologies and services that Sophos offer to keep your users secure.

David leads BlackBerry’s Sales Engineering Organisation across Europe, Middle East and Africa; his team, spread across the region, evangelise BlackBerry’s Cyber Security Portfolio and help BlackBerry Customers to identify and successfully execute their Cyber Security Strategies. At the heart of this is BlackBerry’s philosophy that Prevention is Possible and, through taking a Prevention First approach to Cyber Security, Customers can eliminate the noise and focus their efforts efficiently and effectively.

David is an ardent problem solver and technologist who embraces challenges and is always on the look out for elegant solutions.

David has been at BlackBerry since 2013, riding the wave that has seen BlackBerry transform from a Hardware Manufacturer to a leading Cyber Security Software Vendor. In his time with the business David has lead Enterprise Developer Relations and ISV Partnerships, partnered with Google bringing Android Enterprise to Market, and served as lead Solutions Architect for the EMEA region turning customer challenges into success with BlackBerry technologies.

Jim Hannah is acting CISO after joining Social Security Scotland in September 2019 as Security Operations Manager with responsibility for leading the operational teams across cyber, physical and personnel security.

Before that, he was IT Operations Manager and then CISO at the Department for International Development. He led on setting up a service centre to support a pan government secure collaboration system and spent five years serving in the Royal Navy Reserves.

Prior to becoming a civil servant he worked as Operations Director at Ceridian UK, and also held various senior positions delivering managed services to customers of Compaq and HP.

Dr. Tom Prunier has 20+ years of experience in information technology, security, and criminal investigations, specifically in the areas of risk management, incident response, audit, and computer forensics. Tom has been a leader for small and large teams for cyber efforts around the globe as well as across government and civilian sectors to include the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Department of Defense, and FBI. Tom is currently the interim CTO for Leidos UK & Europe.

Tom has a Bachelor’s Degree in Technology, a Master’s Degree in Information Management, and a Doctorate in Computer Science with emphasis on enterprise information systems. Tom is a Certified Chief Information security Officer (C|CISO), Certified Information System  Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Ethical Hacker (C|CEH).

Tom is a Professor at Colorado Technical University in the Doctoral Program and is published and has presented at various professional conferences to include ISC2 World Congress, Guidance Software Forensic Conference, SC Congress, and CSI Conference. Tom was a panel member of the 44th President of the United States Cyber Collaboration Task Force, Columbia University Future Tech Panel and the National Sheriff’s Associations Computer Technology Panel.

Following a 30 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. He currently leads the Scottish Governments National Cyber Incident Co-ordination arrangements. He is currently working on the Scottish Government’s commitment around bringing forward the establishment of a recognised, authoritative and collaborative function to combat the accelerating threat of cyber attack to Scotland.

Scott Burden is NHS Tayside’s Service Delivery Manager with responsibility for Network infrastructure within the Digital Directorate, he has over 27 years’ experience in delivering and Managing NHS IT Solutions, and supporting large Enterprise Infrastructure within the Healthcare setting.  Scott has also in recent times had extensive involvement in Cyber Security measures for the Health Board and a keen believer in achieving stable, safe and secure delivery of Digital enabled Healthcare services to the local population.

Inspector Gallacher has served as a Police Officer, initially with Strathclyde Police, and now Police Scotland, for over 27 years.

Mark has undertaken a number of Operational and Corporate roles over the course of his career, his diverse portfolio ranges from managing critical incidents to inducting new recruits into the Service whilst Head of Probationer Training.

In September 2020 Mark was appointed to lead Police Scotland’s Cybercrime Harm Prevention Team.  He quickly developed strong relationships with key partners, working collaborating with them to continually achieve shared goals.

In the past year, the Cybercrime Harm Prevention Team has been shortlisted for a number of industry awards and in November 2021 were named the Outstanding Cyber Team at the Cyber Scotland Awards.

John is a Senior Consultant with CGI who has been working in security and telecoms around the globe for over 20 years.  With the majority of his career being based in Scotland he appreciates the particular challenges of the local geography.  While at THUS John gained his MBA from the Strathclyde Business School and this has enabled him to supplement his technical background with a business lens.  John has worked with senior stakeholders across the public sector, policing and enterprise to help articulate technical challenges in terms of business outcomes.  Most recently John has been actively engaged representing CGI on the NCSC working group for OT security, tailoring advice from the IT world for OT environments.  This has been of particular interest to him with his background working supporting some of the UKs largest Utilities.

Bill Buchanan is a Professor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University, and a Fellow of the BCS and the IET. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cyber security. Currently he leads the Centre for Distributed Computing, Networks, and Security and The Cyber Academy (http://thecyberacademy.org).
His main research focus is around information sharing, such as using Trust and Governance Policies, threat analysis, cryptography, and triage within digital forensics. This has led to several World-wide patents, and in three highly successful spin-out companies: Zonefox (zonefox.com); Symphonic Software (www.symphonicsoft.com/); and Cyan Forensics (cyanforensics.com).
Bill regularly appears on TV and radio related to computer security, and has given evidence to the Justice Committee at the Scottish Parliament, along with being part of the BBC Scottish Independence Team of Experts (speciality: Cyber Security). This includes appearances on Newsnight Scotland, Good Morning Scotland, Panorama, and Radio 5 Newsdrive.
Bill was named as one of the Top 100 people for Technology in Scotland for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. In Feb 2016, he was also included in the FutureScot “Top 50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World”. Recently his work on Secret Shares received “Innovation of the Year” at the Scottish Knowledge Exchange Awards, for a research project which involves splitting data into secret shares, and can then be distributed across a public Cloud-based infrastructure. He was included in the JISC Top 50 Higher Education Social Media Influencers in 2015.

Andy McClintock is Chief Digital Officer at Social Security Scotland. He is a passionate and proven digital leader with over 25 years’ experience in delivering private and public sector programmes and undertaking various assurance and advisory roles in the UK and Europe.

Combining traditional IT leadership expertise with innovative forward thinking, he provides energy, drive and determination in the development, design, and implementation of effective, sustainable and transformative technology and digital strategies, programs, and services for the new Executive Agency.

Andy has been recognised in the CIO 100 Awards, 2019, 2020, 2021 and by Holyrood Connect as Digital Leader 2020.

Steve has been with Cisco for 15 years and looks after the Cisco Security business in Scotland. Passionate about ‘doing the right thing’ for the customer, something that is part of the Cisco culture.

Before Cisco, Steve helped design some of the largest Optical networks on the planet, aged prematurely when working on ATM networks and laments the demise of IBM OS/2, a misunderstood OS ahead of its time.

Kevin is the National Security Operations Lead at NHS National Services Scotland.  He has worked within NHS IT & Cyber Security for 25 years.

He is responsible for building the national security operations capability.  The service will include security monitoring, engineering, vulnerability management, incident response, threat intelligence and threat hunting.

Richard Jones joined Foreign and Commonwealth office and completed 26 years of technology and engineering work including a very strong security element. Moving to Leidos in 2014, Richard lead the Security Management function for a large HMG client covering all aspects of IT security including Cyber Operations.  Subsequently, Richard has invested in both the people and technology to develop the Leidos UK Cyber security offering for our clients.  Richard’s team provides support to national bodies with a focus on Government, Defence, National Security, Critical National Infrastructure, and key public services.  Our strong relationships with key partners in providing Cyber solutions brings innovation and assurance wherever and whenever our customers need it.

Neil has a deep understanding of IT support and cyber security, and extensive experience of working with a wide range of companies.

As technical lead for the Cyber Essentials Scheme, Neil is also a key member of the IASME and NCSC Joint Technical Working Group. He has regular liaisons with major IT providers to ensure IASME has the latest updates on issues like end of life for commonly used software.

A SASE Solution Specialist with over 25yrs in the IT industry.  Laterally, Joe was 2 years at a Hyperscaler working on Digital Transformation Projects gaining invaluable experience with all things of a cloudy nature before returning to Cisco.