Nearly twenty years in security architecture, four books, and a habit of explaining technical risk to people who do not want a lecture. Conferences, universities, chapter events and internal sessions.
A narrative history of the cases that made the field necessary — the phone phreak, the 75-cent accounting error that led to the KGB, the graduate student whose experiment took down a tenth of the internet. Funny in places, sobering in others, and it lands the point that every control we have exists because somebody was hurt first.
How cybercrime industrialised between 1999 and 2010 — the Montreal teenager, the Manila student, the Secret Service informant running the largest card theft in American history. What changed was not capability but business model, and the same shift is visible in the ransomware economy now.
UK cybersecurity has a skills shortage and a hiring process that filters out the people who would fix it. Drawn from sitting on panels at every level and reviewing hundreds of CVs from career changers. Uncomfortable for hiring managers, useful for everyone.
A practical session for career changers: the four paths and who each suits, which certifications repay the money, what evidence actually gets you interviewed, and how UK interviews are really run. Runs well for universities, apprenticeship schemes and employer-led retraining programmes.
Play the 2,600 Hz tone that opened the American telephone network, and release the Morris worm to watch a tenth of the internet fall. Five cases, in the browser.
Try it →Talks can be adapted, combined or cut to a slot. If you want something that is not listed but sits near it — supply chain, the attribution problem, incident communication, or the history of a specific case — ask, because it is probably already written.
For events I will also do a bookstall, signed copies, or a short reading if the format suits it. Slides are shared afterwards without a paywall.
New books, and the occasional note about what I am working on.
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