Speakers

Nicole Fowler, CISO, Bank of Ireland

Nicole is the CISO at Bank of Ireland, where she plays a pivotal role in developing and implementing comprehensive Cyber Strategies, supporting the Board in meeting complex regulatory obligations, and safeguarding the organisation against evolving threats. A seasoned Cyber, Information Security, and Risk Leader, she brings over two decades of experience spanning financial... services, professional services, and start-ups. A member of the UK Government Cyber Advisory Board and a trusted advisor in various capacities, Nicole leverages a wealth of expertise to empower organisations and drive meaningful societal contributions. She also serves as a trustee for prominent cultural institutions, including the Thackray Medical Museum, where she chairs the Finance, Audit, and Risk Committee, and the York Museums Trust. These trustee roles reflect Nicole’s dedication to preserving cultural heritage and providing strategic oversight to safeguard the legacy of these institutions.more

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

James Kwaan, CIO - GS&S, Lloyds Banking Group

James Kwaan has worked for a number of blue chip companies in Simulation, Energy and Financial Services. He is a former director of Information Security (CISO) and Global data protection officer. In his spare time he is a supporter of women into cybersecurity by starting the ISACA "SheLeadsTech" initiative in 2019. He is a recognised expert in Information Security... and in 2017 was awarded three prizes for his contribution: Malcolm Turner Memorial Prize for outstanding contribution to Risk Management and Information Security, Wayne K. Snipes prize for best European Chapter and Cyber Evangelist of the year at the Scottish Cyber Awards. James is currently working for Lloyds Banking Group.more

Jill Robertson, Former Deputy CISO Metro Bank & Independent Consultant

Jill Robertson is an experienced Cyber Security professional within Financial Services and Consultancy sectors performing a range of roles in delivery & Leadership. Formerly the Deputy CISO at Metro Bank, she is actively engaged in many Cyber Security communities supporting all sectors such as in-house organisational security, supplier tool & services and... research. Companies she has worked at include Bank of America MBNA, RBS, LBG, F-Secure and Metro Bank.
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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

Ali Shepherd, Director of Cyber & Operational Resilience (CISO), FCA

Ali Shepherd is the Director of Cyber & Operational Resilience (CISO) for the FCA, and is co-leading the FCA’s internal AI adoption. Ali has over twenty years of experience working in security and incident response, both inside government and in the private sector. This has included extensive experience of managing organisational responses to sophisticated cyber... intrusions by nation state and organised crime groups. Prior to joining the FCA, Ali was a Managing Director at Mandiant, heading up teams across EMEA providing advice and expertise on cyber security to governments and private sector companies, including major incident response services.more

Dhruv Bisani, Head of Adversarial Attack Simulations, Starling Bank

Dhruv is a leading cybersecurity professional with a key interest in leading & delivering Adversarial Attack (Red/Purple Team) simulations. He is currently the Head of Adversarial Attack Simulations at Starling Bank and formerly established and served as the Head of the Red Team at Resillion. Dhruv’s core focus has been on developing the red team (attack simulation)... capability at Resillion, while focusing on testing less common environments such as MacOS environments and zero-trust red team engagements. He has successfully delivered advanced attack simulations across a range of sectors including finance, healthcare, legal, and retail. Dhruv possesses extensive experience in executing projects under the UK CBEST/TBEST schemes. Dhruv’s role encompasses a wide array of responsibilities such as recruitment, training, overseeing sales/finances, as well as enhancing technical methodologies and processes. As part of his role, Dhruv has collaborated closely with C-suite executives and CISOs, providing strategic cybersecurity insights to help secure the organisation. more

Raymond de Jong, EMEA Field CTO, Isovalent

Raymond de Jong is Field CTO for EMEA at Isovalent, the originators of the Cilium project, providing networking, observability, and security for cloud-native applications using eBPF. In this role, he is supporting and enabling customers and partners to be successful with Cilium in their mission-critical environments. Leveraging almost a decade of experience in Software... Defined Networking he is passionate about learning customer use-cases and designing solutions to meet their requirements. When not working, Raymond enjoys playing tennis, riding bikes, gaming, and music playing the guitar or piano.more