I think my most memorable achievement was a proactive endpoint security control I designed after analysing thousands of malware samples , called Trusted Application Protection . The reason it is memorable to me is I was talking with a customer who worked in IT at a large hospital , and they explained how the control had prevented them from getting hit with ransomware by blocking a phishing document from launching its malicious payload . It was one of those times that the human impact of the work we do really hit home , and that interaction has shaped a lot of my thinking ever since .

What first made you think of a career in technology ?

On the lighter side of things , we ask the industry experts what makes them tick . . . .

I had a slightly unusual route into technology ; I was always fascinated by technology and would regularly take things apart to understand how they worked . As a teenager , I discovered the early Internet and things quickly spiralled as I discovered the world of hackers who shared my interests in taking things apart and making them work differently . This later caused me to be thrown out of school for hacking all the school systems .

I spent the next decade working in various jobs and studying in my spare time – I was still learning about technology and how to bend and break it , but I knew I didn ’ t want to be a developer or IT admin . Then a new degree programme in Digital Forensics came out , and after reading the course description , I decided this was where I wanted to be , peeking under the hood of technology . The degree got me interested in technical research and I was offered a research and teaching role at the university which later led to my roles in industry doing security research and engineering .

What style of management philosophy do you employ in your current position ?

Don ’ t hire smart people to tell them what to do . Hire smart people who can help tell you what to do ( I think I stole that from Steve Jobs ). When working with talented technical people I find the best approach is to focus on clearing a path for your team , unblocking issues and ensuring they can succeed .

A few years ago , I read employees feeling their time is being wasted is a bigger issue than compensation , company culture or anything else . This aligns with

my management philosophy of clearing a path and giving people the opportunity to do the things they are passionate about .

While it is important to take your work seriously you should not take each other too seriously ; having fun and being as transparent as possible really goes a long way in building a high-performance team . It also helps build a culture where you celebrate wins and losses together as long as you keep learning along the way .

What do you think has emerged as the technology trend of this year and why ?

AI , AI and AI . It is hard to read the news , watch a webinar or look at a new product without the mention of AI . It feels like it is impossible to launch anything in 2024 without talking about AI . Now as a technical practitioner , I struggle with this a bit because a lot of the AI hyped capabilities aren ’ t actually AI – at best they

Don ’ t hire smart people to tell them what to do . Hire smart people who can help tell you what to do ( I think I stole that from Steve Jobs ).

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