ALARM seminar: Life's a breach

John Airey

Principal Technology Consultant, Waterstons

John is a technological trusted advisor to organisations navigating complex change, leading major transformation programmes, technology due diligence, risk analysis, and enterprise IT strategy development.

He is passionate about using technology to enable growth, improve operations, and align IT with business objectives. As a Principal Technology Consultant, John focuses on architecting complex solutions and advising at board level on technology-driven change, particularly in high-stakes environments such as mergers, carve-outs and integrations.

He continues to work closely with clients to translate vision into action, helping them to unlock barriers, accelerate decision-making, and ensure technology delivers measurable business outcomes.

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Joel Durston

Associate, Kennedys

Joel Durston is an Associate in Kennedys Cyber and Data team.

Joel has a wealth of experience in supporting clients of all sizes deal with a variety of cyber and data matters, spanning from providing legal and regulatory guidance where an organisation has been the victim of a ransomware attack, to providing ad hoc privacy guidance on a range of topics.   

In particular Joel takes pride in understanding his client’s values and culture in order to provide a commercial approach to responding to incidents. Enabling clients to navigate difficult cyber incidents with minimal disruption, to help control the narrative around incidents and fully understand their obligations both in the UK and internationally.

Prior to working in the cyber sector Joel built up a number of years’ experience in insurance and commercial litigation, including working on a number of high value and high profile claims.

Particular examples of Joel’s experience include:

• Providing breach response support following a ransomware attack on Customer Relationship Manager, processing data on behalf of hundreds of international organisations and millions of data subjects.
• Acting as breach counsel for a large retailer, whose systems were compromised, impacting data for data subjects for over 140 different countries.
• Provided regulatory and legal support to a well know organisation following discovery of successive data incidents.
• Provided advice and guidance to a number of UK law firms following a ransomware incident to a major IT service provider, causing significant operational difficulties to may across the legal sector.
• Successfully defended 100+ data claims stemming from a single data incident.
• Provided legal advice and guidance to an organisation who had a £6 million payment diverted following a business mailbox compromise.  

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Azad Hajiyev

Principal Cyber Security Consultant , Waterstons

Azad Hajiyev has over 25 years of experience working in IT and information security. In his last assignment as CISO, Azad has delivered information security transformation for one of the UK’s top 20 universities taking responsibility and providing a leadership for cyber and information security for the organisation. Azad has strong interest in the field of AI, enthusiastic about AI application and keen supporter of responsible AI adoption with focus on AI risks. Azad is part of the Waterstons’ AI thought leadership group.

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Jessica Hall

Head of Security Operations , Waterstons

Jessica joined Waterstons as a graduate within our Managed Service department and since then has been dedicated to creating and expanding our Security Operations function.

Over her career, Jessica has built upon her Digital Forensics degree to specialise in Security Operations and Incident Response. Jessica expanded Waterstons SOC capabilities in April 2021 to a 24x7x365 team spanning over the UK and Australia, with a team of over 15 experts, which she now leads.

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Stewart Hogg

Associate Director of Cyber, Waterstons

Stewart joined Waterstons over 13 years ago and was responsible for building the cyber division – that now boasts over 40 experts who deliver NCSC certified consultancy as well as a CREST certified 24/7 Security Operations Centre - from scratch.

Widely respected in the cyber security sphere, Stew is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information Security, an ISO27001 lead auditor and NIST framework expert.

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Simon Holroyd

Senior Information Security Consultant , Waterstons

Simon joined Waterstons after a wide-ranging career spanning occupational and criminal psychology, through to market and social research.

His reputation as an entrepreneurial fixer was built through roles as varied as behavioural therapist, computer programmer, data analyst, operations director and leadership team member.

Over recent years Simon has found his niche in data protection and information security such that joining Waterstons was a logical next step for him.

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Neil Robertson

Principal Cyber Security Consultant (vCISO lead) , Waterstons

Neil leads the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) function helping clients to define their cyber strategy/roadmap to build proportionate cyber defences and protect their assets.

Neil has 25 years of experience in the finance and insurance sector in a senior management/Head of IT role.

Neil is a Certified CISO, Certified in the Governance or Enterprise IT (CGEIT) a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and an ITIL Expert.

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James Wall

Director - Cyber & Technology Practice, Gallagher

James is currently a Director within the Technology & Cyber Liability Practice in Gallagher’s London Specialty department. James has spent the last eight years of his career at Gallagher's, originally as a placement broker for complex cyber risks into the London Market. He has since progressed and is the UK/International team Gallagher Specialty running a team of six placement brokers and Account Executives.

 

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