Cyber Security Management Committee members
Chair and Vice-Chairs
Sian John MBE
Sian John MBE
Siân John MBE is Chief Technology Officer at NCC Group responsible for intelligence, insight and innovation within the company.
Siân has worked in Cybersecurity for 25 years across strategy, business risk, privacy, and technology. She is a Fellow of the UK Chartered Institute of Information Security, Chair of the techUK Cybersecurity committee, and a council member for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EPSRC). Siân was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 2018 New Year’s Honours List for services to Cybersecurity.
Carla Baker
Carla Baker
I am currently a Senior Director of Government Affairs at Palo Alto Networks, responsible for driving the company’s public policy agenda in the UK and Ireland on a broad range of issues, including cyber security, privacy, and wider technology policy. I am also a Trustee of the UK Cyber Security Council and a member of the Scottish Government’s National Cyber Resilience Advisory Board.
Before joining Palo Alto Networks, I was a Director of Government Affairs at Symantec for several years. Prior to that, I was an Associate Director at techUK, responsible for establishing the cyber security programme in 2009 and then the Cyber Growth Partnership. I began my career in Government at the Department for Health, Department for Transport and the Home Office and held a variety of different roles ranging from facilitating procurement contracts to shaping the development of mental health legislation and taking the Bill through Parliament.
Dr Paul Thorlby
Dr Paul Thorlby
I am a senior technical leader in QinetiQ with over 25 years’ experience in cyber security and related, mainly for National Security and Defence markets in the UK. I am a Chief Technologist in cyber and information assurance, the Cyber & Intelligence Group Leader, and a QinetiQ Fellow. I have previously held technical, project management, business development, strategy, and business leadership roles. I chair the employer steering group that has pioneered development of national cyber security apprenticeship standards, specifically the Level 4 Cyber Security Technologist and the Level 6 Cyber Security Technical Professional Integrated Degree Apprenticeship. I have been a member of the TechUK Cyber Management Committee since 2012.
Council Members
techUK Cyber Security Management Committee, starting from January 2023:
Alex Woodward
Alex Woodward
Alex leads cyber security services for CGI IT in the UK. The group provides a balanced portfolio of services across a broad range of sectors from Defence and Intelligence, Central and Local Government, Energy and Utilities, Financial Services as well as the commercial sector. Engagements include the design and delivery of major transformational programmes, consultative assignments, and the provision of a range of operational security managed services.
Chris Parker MBE
Chris Parker MBE
Chris Parker MBE is a strategic leader who is currently UK Director, Government for Fortinet, the largest cybersecurity vendor in the world. Previously, Chris has designed and led international operations at national and multi-national level. Chris holds the NCSC strategic relationship for Fortinet and was recently invited by the MOD to be the Industry Lead for their complex MDI Programme (Digitization in MOD). He is a leading advocate of collaboration in industry and government and promotes sustainability and diversity in the Sector.
Senior Corporate roles include: $1B Infrastructure project director, COO global oil exploration corporation and founder of three consultancy companies and Cyberplus Ltd. Chris is a Fellow of the Tällberg Foundation, holds a Masters' Degree in Technology and two post-graduate diplomas in Strategic Management. He is a former front line Infantry Commander and supports veteran care and encouraging veterans to join the tech industry. Chris lives between London and Oxfordshire, plays hockey and enjoys his church, sports, art and the countryside.
Dr Andy Lilly
Dr Andy Lilly
Andy is Director and Co-Founder of Armour Communications with a proven track record of delivering challenging, leading-edge research and development solutions into global markets. Having held leadership positions at multi-national organisations as well as VC-funded start-ups, Andy has a broad defence and cyber experience, from secret mobile comms systems to resilient satellite software, and from military phased array radars to commercial broadband mesh networks and in-home voice and video phones.
Andy is a key contributor to Armour’s work with the NCSC and UK government, as well Armour’s range of overseas customers, for which the company received the Queen’s Award for Export in 2022.
In addition to being the CTO, Andy’s roles at Armour include CISO, data protection and export control (of cyber products).
Dr Bernard Parsons
Dr Bernard Parsons
I am the CEO and a co-founder of Becrypt, a UK SME that develops and supplies a range of cyber security software products and services, primarily for critical national infrastructure organisations.
Originally Becrypt’s CTO, and with a career starting in academia, I continue to leverage my background in and passion for technology.
I believe that collaboration is a key enabler for growth within the cyber security sector. Over recent years I have supported a number of engagements between government and industry, addressing issues and opportunities across both policy and emerging technology landscapes. I have been an active Board member of The Cyber Growth Partnership, a joint DCMS and Industry initiative, and Chair of the High Assurance UK Industry Association.
Dr Budgie Dhanda MBE
Dr Budgie Dhanda MBE
I have over 25 years of experience of working in defence, national security and cyber security. I have led sales and delivery into national programmes and I am currently leading a cyber project supporting the Department of Health and Social Care. I have also worked alongside the National Cyber Security Centre in raising awareness and understanding of cyber security and improving cyber maturity and resilience in Board level engagements in the private sector.
Prior to joining PA, on behalf of DCMS, the NCSC and cyber security professional bodies, I chaired the project to form the new UK Cyber Security Council. I also formed and led a cross public and private sector Trailblazer group to form the new Level 3 Cyber Security Apprenticeship standard.
I was awarded a MBE for services to cyber security in the 2022 New Year’s Honours List.
I also chair the ADS Cyber group (DISIG).
Elaine Hanley
Elaine Hanley
Elaine Hanley is a Partner in IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services in the UK and Ireland for the Industrial Sector leading Cybersecurity Services in Ireland for key clients, and helping these clients to drive business securely. It is a role that combines Elaine’s interest in operating successful business outcomes safely, as well as harnessing the data at our disposal safely and respectfully.
Elaine likes to help organisations demystify the often over-technical jargon in the Security business and decode the underlying risks in terms of why a focus on cyber security is in the interests of all members of an organisations leadership team, and what can be done to minimise the risk, increase time to response and minimise impact of cyber activity.
As part of her commitment to creating and continuously improving the support for a workforce where diversity is celebrated, and the huge benefits of inclusion can be realised, Elaine has an additional role as Talent and Engagement Leader, UKI Consulting and Delivery for Cybersecurity Services.
These roles provide a complementary conduit for Elaine to bring her experience in leading teams and building on a career of multiple complementary fields of work, including
WW Lead for DataOps Center of Excellence, cross platform Product Management, data and process modelling, software development and client work.
Elaine holds a BAI (Software Engineering) from Trinity College, Dublin, and an MSc (Computer Applications) from Dublin City University.
Gordon Morrison
Gordon Morrison
Gordon is Senior Director for EMEA Government Affairs for Splunk Inc and a company director of Splunk UK. He spent the early part of his career as a scientist at the Atomic Weapons Establishment and later as a project engineer in MOD Abbey Wood specialising in technical security solutions. He then held a number technical and senior management roles in the UK defence and secure government sectors. Most recently, he was a Director at the UK trade association for technology, techUK and spent two years with McAfee UK as Director of Government Relations. Gordon has been internationally published, most recently with the World Economic Forum, has given evidence to Parliamentary Select Committees and has spoken at major international events. Gordon is also currently Chair of the techUK Central Government Council, a member of the techUK Public Services Board and a member of the ADS Security Sector Board.
Kate Wendelboe and Aurorah Cheney
Kate Wendelboe and Aurorah Cheney
Kate Wendelboe is currently BT Security’s Strategy & Growth Director (alongside Aurorah), a trained executive coach and previously head of Strategy for a portfolio of BT’s smaller businesses. Prior to that, she was Director of BT Media & Broadcast after doing proposition development, business development, and strategy. Before joining BT, Kate was at Reuters working in marketing communications and then journalism. She was one of the team that started Reuters Insider, Reuters’ OTT platform for financial professionals. Kate left Reuters to study for an MBA at Cambridge’s Judge Business School where she specialised in Culture, Arts and Media Management. Kate is married with two sons and, after living in the States, Hong Kong and Switzerland, is now based in London. If she had unlimited free time she would be training for an Ironman Triathlon, learning to code and writing a best selling novel
Aurorah Cheney is currently BT Security’s Strategy & Growth Director (alongside Kate). Aurorah has held roles as a portfolio director and senior programme manager reporting at executive board level, with accountabilities for delivering large scale transformational change at a global scale, primarily within the US, UK and Europe. She’s worked across several sectors, with a wealth of experience in technology and business transformations. Her strengths lie in bridging the gap between strategy and delivery phases, focusing on turning strategic ambitions into a tangible outcomes. In 2019, Aurorah worked as Head of Security Propositions in BT Enterprise, where she was responsible for developing security propositions strategy, also delivering comprehensive security solutions into the UK Enterprise marketplace. Her ambition is to make security controls accessible to organisation’s of all sizes; from small and medium, up to major and corporate as they commence or refine their own digital transformations. She is a collaborative, servant leader with over 20 years of experience managing teams.
Aurorah is married with a daughter and a son, has lived and worked across the globe, but now calls Bristol her home.
Katharina Sommer
Katharina Sommer
As Group Head of Strategy & Public Affairs for leading global cyber and software resilience provider NCC Group, I am responsible for our political engagement, government relations and lobbying work, shaping the current and future operating environment that enables our growth ambitions and makes the digital world safer and more secure. This involves educating policy-makers on cyber security and briefing colleagues on policy and regulatory developments; it means I am an interpreter and conduit between NCC Group’s technical experts and the political world.
I come from a social sciences and consultancy background, and have lived and worked on three different continents in the last 12+ years. I value diversity of thought and constructive challenge, aspire to understand the complex global trends that inform how governments and businesses respond to an ever evolving and unpredictable interconnected world, and am passionate about how public and private sectors collaborate to improve cyber resilience.
Keith Driver
Keith Driver
Keith joined Raytheon in 2015 and is an Engineering Fellow and CTO Cyber at Raytheon UK. He has a distinguished career in the telecommunications, defence and cyber security industries as a technology leader and board member in a variety of SME and large organisations, delivering technical advantage though strategy, product definition, and innovation. He has worked extensively with commercial, defence and government sector customers worldwide, and has spoken regularly at global conferences.
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown joined BSI on 1st February 2021 in the role of Global Managing Director of the Digital Trust Consulting business and brings over 30 years of expertise in cybersecurity, data privacy and business resilience. He has previously held global leadership roles across industry and professional services organizations, including tenures as Global CISO at SABMiller plc, and Global CIO/CTO at Spectris plc, as well as leadership roles as a Senior Partner at Wipro Ltd. Mark was also a Partner at Ernst & Young (EY) LLP.
Mark is internationally recognized as a leading authority on digital trust and brings a wealth of knowledge including extensive proficiency on Internet of Things (IoT) and the expanding cybersecurity marketplace as organizations grapple with digital transformation and addressing new technology that brings new business opportunities and risks. He promotes a sharp business focus on proportional and pragmatic response based on his practical industry leadership experience.
Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson
I am an experienced Information Security Professional with over twenty years’ experience in technical sales, security architecture, strategy, and consultancy. During this time, I have engaged across the UK Government, wider Public Sector marketplace and elements of the UK Critical National Infrastructure.
I am passionate about all aspects of Cyber Security, appreciating everything from the intricacies of sophisticated exploits through to ensuring that cyber security delivers business value and isn’t seen as a technology cost centre. I also enjoy learning about non-technology elements of cyber, especially socio-technical factors and firmly believe that security must evolve to being more integrated, transparent and user centric.
Paul Barker
Paul Barker
Paul has over 30 years’ experience working in the IT security industry, working for both public and private sector organisations delivering advice and guidance on enterprise security as well as delivering global security platforms. Paul has been an advocate for the adoption of industry and regulatory standards encompassing security best practices and has extensive experience in the secure architecture design and deployment for telecommunications, petro-chemical, healthcare, governments, police forces and financial institutions across the globe.
As part of the activities that Paul participates in his current role as a Cyber Security Consultant within Public Sector and Defence for Atos within Northern Europe, he continues to promote the real value of implementing technologies through CISO engagements, by understanding the challenges that organisations face. Paul has previously been involved in the initial implementation and standardisation of the technologies that underpinned the Public Services Network.
Ravi Boodhram
Ravi Boodhram
Ravi is an experienced Security Architecture Consultant with expertise in cloud security and enterprise risk management, delivery of Cyber Security at a programme level and, designing secure solutions over the past 16 years working with large public and private sector organisations.
Ravi is the Security Architecture & Engineering capability lead within BAE Systems Digital Intelligence with responsibility for setting the strategic direction for the capability (including in Cloud Security), providing delivery assurance across security architecture consulting projects, developing the community of security architects and, working with customers to understand their challenges and developing solutions to best support them.
Ravi has been part of the techUK Cyber Security Management Committee since July 2023.
Richard Beck
Richard Beck
Richard is an experienced security professional, turned educator, with over 15 years in operational security roles. He is a positive change agent with an innovative, commercial, and collaborative approach.
Richard is driven to enable cyber security skills for now – and for the future – helping the UK to address the immediate and longer-term cyber skills shortages and bring a more diverse range of individuals and experiences into cyber through eco-system collaboration.
Richard has designed and architected numerous enterprise and nationwide cyber programmes, including the NCSC CyberFirst interventions, multiple funded technical boot camps, women in cyber programme, secure engineering, future security leader and the award winning NPCC national cybercrime programme.
He pioneered the original cyber apprentice ‘fast track’ programme with HMG, to establish successful L4 cyber apprentice programmes. Richard is very active in the UK cyber eco-system, speaker, and panelist, mentoring cyber-start up’s, member of, and advisor to, industry cyber security bodies.
Rick Hemsley
Rick Hemsley
Rick is a Partner in the EY UKI Cyber Security practice and leads our Government and Infrastructure (G&I) security practice. Rick is an accomplished Executive, Partner Level Consultant and Information Technology Professional with over 25 years of experience. He has a proven track record delivering tangible positive results at a senior level, he has been involved in the execution and leadership of key cyber security initiative across sectors including within HMG. Rick led the consulting team that supported NHS Digital in the delivery of their Cyber Security Improvement programme (including: Strategy; Funding; Secure Boundary; Architecture; Threat Intelligence; SecOps Improvement) and led the consulting team that supported GSG in the development of the GSG operating model and security profession. Outside of public sector Rick has provided quality and assurance to major cyber programmes across sectors including highly regulated environments such as Financial Services.
Saba Ahmed
Saba Ahmed
I lead the Managed Security Services consulting practice for Accenture UK with a focus on Detection & Response. I have 19 years of experience in the security industry spanning across geographies delivering security projects in Middle East, Asia and Europe.
For the last 10 years my focus has been on building Security Operations Centres and SIEM transformations for UK clients. More recently I have also been working with technology vendors in this space to define what the next generation of security operations looks like.
I am a passionate technologist at heart with a mindset to find innovative solutions for the client challenges. I am an ardent advocate for inclusion and diversity and lead I&D for Accenture across Europe.
Sarah Blundell
Sarah Blundell
As COO of a growing UK Cyber SME, I am passionate about delivering technology that can be used to protect people while also delivering business value. Much of the focus in Cyber security education is on improving the security baseline but I believe that this should not be at the expense of identifying and analysing new and emerging threats and trends along with the opportunities this can provide UK PLC.
My prior background in risk management in the financial services sector and strong operational delivery experiences enables me to blend the desire for increased security with the requirements for usability to ensure that security posture is increased both theoretically and in practice.
I have a strong track record of building successful partnerships to stimulate innovation and growth. These include commercial, academic and government partnerships. Successful collaboration enhances solutions through bringing a diverse range of expertise to bear on a problem.
Shadi Razak
Shadi Razak
Shadi is a cyber security and business digitisation expert, with a strong foundation in business and IT strategy. His expertise in digital risks intelligence, supply chain cyber security, data privacy, cloud security, UAV & CAV cyber resilience has made him a sought-after advisor to and coach for a number of international blue chip companies, government organisations, financial services and SMEs in the UK and the MENA region for the past 20 years. Shadi is a successful tech entrepreneur, with a previous exit to Microsoft, and is currently the CTO of CyNation and Angoka. His innovative thinking has led to several security-based patents. He has been a visiting lecturer at a number of International and British universities and is currently a Board Member and President of the Information Security Group Alumni, Technology and Finance Society and a mentor for a number of FinTech and SecurityTech start-ups in UK, Netherlands and UAE.
Tim Ward
Tim Ward
Tim is CEO and Co-Founder (with Dr Mike Butler) of Think Cyber Security Ltd. ThinkCyber offer the next generation in Security Awareness. Their Redflags™ software product applies behavioural and learning science theory, in a highly innovative approach to deliver context-sensitive just-in-time guidance.
Tim has worked in IT for more than 25 years both in consulting and corporate IT with organisations including Logica, PA Consulting, Sepura and was previously Global Head of IT for the cyber division of BAE Systems (previously known as Detica). Tim graduated top of his year in Computer Science with AI at the University of Leeds, holds an MBA from the Open University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship from Cambridge University.
Tim is proud to have helped ThinkCyber gain significant recognition for Redflags™: NCSC for start-ups programme; Accenture Fintech Innovation Lab 2022; TechUK Cyber Innovator of the Year 2021; SC Award Europe (Best Professional Training Programme)
Tony Burton
Tony Burton
Tony Burton is the Managing Director of the Cyber Security and Trust business of Thales UK Ltd. Covering a broad spectrum of market verticals from Defence, Government and CNI, Tony has established Thales as a leading supplier of cyber consultancy, managed services and programme delivery. Tony’s commitment to the development of an inclusive and socially responsible business has seen great progress in STEM outreach and regional development in South Wales and the establishment of an international Operational Technology Cyber Competence Centre has been a particular highlight alongside the National Digital Exploitation Centre. Tony comes from a strong engineering and business management background and has been an active member of the ADS Security Sector Board over the last seven years. Tony is married with two children and is still a keen participant in a number of sports including football, running, surfing and cycling.
