Cybersecurity

Why organisations work with Martin Smith He built SASIG from a private forum into a community of more than 11,000 cybersecurity practitioners across roughly 4,500 organisations, which gives him a unique read on what CISOs actually worry about, not what vendors say they should. His argument that breaches are behavioural before they are technical reframes the cyber conversation for boards that have over-invested in tooling and under-invested in people. Three decades of operational security experience across the RAF, Kroll, Standard Chartered and his own firm, The Security Company, lets him talk to executive audiences without retreating into jargon or vendor pitch. He speaks with the authority of an industry founder, not a commentator. SASIG, TSC, and his OSPAs Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 give him standing other cyber speakers cannot match in a UK boardroom. He is unusually effective with mixed audiences of technical and non-technical leaders, a direct consequence of his behavioural psychology background and a career spent translating between the two. Biography highlights Founder and Chairman of The Security Awareness Special Interest Group (SASIG), established 2004; now part of Nineteen Group following the January 2024 acquisition. Awarded the MBE for 15 years as a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force Security (Provost) Branch. Former Senior Director of Corporate Security at Kroll Associates (UK) and Head of Information Security at Standard Chartered Bank. Founded The Security Company (International) Limited in 1997, exiting via management buyout in December 2019. Lifetime Achievement Award, inaugural OSPAs (Outstanding Security Performance Awards), March 2017. BSc in Behavioural Psychology; FSyI (Fellow of The Security Institute); Freeman Emeritus of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. Biography The vast majority of cybersecurity failures start with a human decision, not a system flaw. That observation has driven Martin Smith’s work for three decades, and it is the argument SASIG, the network he founded in 2004, was built around. Today it represents over 11,000 practitioners drawn from roughly 4,500 organisations across UK industry, government, law enforcement, and academia. His credibility is operational, not theoretical. Fifteen years as a commissioned officer in the Royal Air Force Security (Provost) Branch earned him an MBE. He then went into the commercial sector via Touche Ross, took on Senior Director of Corporate Security at Kroll Associates, and ran information security for Standard Chartered Bank before founding The Security Company (International) Limited in 1997. What ties that career together is a behavioural psychology background that shapes how he reads risk. Boards tend to think of cyber as a technical procurement problem. Smith’s work consistently pushes them toward the harder question of how staff behave under pressure, how culture is engineered, and how awareness is sustained beyond an annual training module. He retired from TSC in December 2019 in a management buyout to focus on SASIG, which Nineteen Group acquired in January 2024. In March 2017 he received the inaugural OSPAs Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on the human factor in security breaches, which remains the most precise summary of what he has spent his career arguing for. Key speaking topics Cyber and information security The human factor in security breaches Security awareness and behavioural risk Counter-terrorism and crisis management Risk and resilience for boards The business of security Ideal for CISOs, CIOs and CTOs assessing the cultural side of their cyber exposure Boards and audit committees recalibrating cyber risk beyond tooling spend HR and learning leaders responsible for security awareness programmes Public-sector and regulated-industry leaders working with sensitive information Audience outcomes A clearer view of where cyber budgets are misallocated between technology and people. Specific, practitioner-grounded examples of how organisations engineer security awareness into culture rather than treat it as a compliance event. A working understanding of the human-factor argument that has reshaped UK cybersecurity practice over the last twenty years. The perspective of a founder who has watched 11,000+ cyber practitioners articulate what really keeps them awake.

Why organisations work with Rory Cellan-Jones He has reported on every significant technology cycle from the dot.com bust to generative AI, which gives senior teams a working baseline for how this wave will and will not behave. His book Always On argues that the smartphone is the Model T Ford of the 21st century and traces the loss of public trust from the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony to Cambridge Analytica. That argument frames a board conversation on AI legitimacy in language buyers can use. He brings the institutional memory of the BBC technology desk into the room, including direct interviews with the founders and chief executives now setting the AI agenda. His OBE for services to journalism, honorary fellowship at the National Museum of Computing, and current advisory roles at FTI Consulting and Brands2Life signal a credibility that survives the move from press gallery to boardroom. He hosts and moderates with the discipline of a live broadcaster, which makes him a strong choice when the brief is a serious panel rather than a single keynote. Biography highlights BBC Technology Correspondent, 2007 to 2021, with prior roles on The Money Programme, Newsnight, and the Today Programme. Appointed OBE in the 2024 Birthday Honours for services to journalism. Author of Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era (Bloomsbury), Dot.Bomb, the memoir Ruskin Park, and Sophie From Romania. Co-host of the Movers and Shakers podcast on Parkinson’s disease, launched 2023. Senior Advisor, FTI Consulting; Senior Media and Strategy Consultant, Brands2Life. Honorary Fellow, National Museum of Computing; honorary degree, University of York. Biography The dot.com bust ran straight through Cellan-Jones’s first stint as a technology reporter. He had just been appointed BBC Internet Correspondent when the bubble broke, and the book he wrote about it, Dot.Bomb, set the pattern for a career spent reporting on technology as something that has to survive contact with markets, regulators and the public. That long memory is what senior teams now use him for. Across fourteen years as BBC Technology Correspondent, from January 2007, he covered the rise of the iPhone, the social media platforms, the cryptocurrency cycles, and the early arguments about AI safety. His book Always On reads that period as a single arc, with the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony as the high water mark of techno-optimism and the Cambridge Analytica revelations as the moment public trust broke. He left the BBC in 2021 and has since taken senior advisory roles at FTI Consulting and Brands2Life, which keep him close to the corporate side of the same questions he reported on as a journalist. He was appointed OBE in the 2024 Birthday Honours. The current AI debate is where the back catalogue earns its keep. Boards are being asked to make commitments at a pace that exceeds the evidence, and the reflex to copy whichever competitor moves first is exactly the pattern he watched go wrong in 2000, again in 2008, and again in 2017. Few speakers can frame that lesson with the same authority. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the public trust problem The smartphone era and the social contract of technology Disruptive innovation and the corporate response Technology regulation and the limits of self-governance Cybersecurity in consumer and corporate life Long-run lessons from forty years of technology cycles Health, technology and the patient experience Ideal for Boards setting AI adoption policy and accountability CIO, CTO and CDO leadership offsites looking for an outsider perspective on the current cycle Communications, public affairs and policy teams managing technology reputation risk Conferences requiring a moderator or host with deep subject knowledge Audience outcomes A clearer read on which parts of the current AI narrative match historical patterns and which are genuinely new A working framework for thinking about public trust as a corporate input, not an externality A sense of the regulatory direction in the UK, EU and US and what that implies for product and policy decisions Questions a board should be asking its own technology and risk leadership in the next twelve months

Why organisations work with Monica Verma Operational CISO experience that informs every recommendation. Three CISO appointments, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health, mean her advice on AI risk comes from someone who has actually run the response. A hacker’s view of AI threats paired with a CISO’s view of governance. She started in offensive security finding web application vulnerabilities. She now advises boards on AI trust and accountability. Both perspectives in the same conversation. A proprietary maturity model. Her Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, introduced in 2020, gives executive teams a way to locate themselves on the cyber and AI maturity curve. Credibility with technical and commercial audiences. Booked by FT Live in Luxembourg, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, and WCM 2025 in Brazil for an audience of 2,000 leaders. A clear point of view on the most contested question in the boardroom right now: how to adopt AI without breaking trust and governance. She has built her current keynote portfolio around it. Biography highlights Three-time Chief Information Security Officer with prior CISO appointments at Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet, Helfo, POBO). Director, International Cybersecurity & Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton (2024). Recognised as Top #3 CISO in EMEA (2023), Top 50 Women in Tech (2022), and Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s Outstanding Security Performance Awards (2019). Board-certified Qualified Technology Expert (QTE) and former board member of Cloud Security Alliance Norway and Women in Cybersecurity Norway. Founder and CEO of Monica Talks Cyber and Cyber Foyer. Host of The Monica Talks Cyber Show podcast and author of The Predictability Factor newsletter. Contributor to Dark Reading. Featured speaker at FT Live, the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe, WCM Brazil, Cyber Root Malta, and the Norwegian Tax Authority’s IT Tech conference. Biography AI is now in the boardroom and in the threat model at the same time. Most leadership teams have someone who can speak credibly about one or the other. Few have someone with three CISO appointments behind them and an active AI advisory practice on top. Monica Verma’s career has run through both. The starting point was offensive security, finding vulnerabilities in web applications and cloud environments before attackers could. Three CISO appointments followed, including Orange Business Cloud Services and the Norwegian Directorate of Health. By 2024 she was Director of International Cybersecurity and Resilience at Booz Allen Hamilton. Her published work bridges the same divide. The Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model, which she introduced in 2020, adapts the technology adoption curve to give executive teams a usable map of their cyber maturity. Her current keynote portfolio takes that lens into the AI era: Innovating with AI Without Breaking Trust and Governing AI Before It Hacks You. The credentials track. Top #3 CISO in EMEA in 2023, Top 50 Women in Tech in 2022, Outstanding Security Advisor at Norway’s OSPAs in 2019. The booking pattern says more. FT Live brought her in for the European fund management industry in Luxembourg. The ACFE chose her to open its 2025 Fraud Conference Europe to ca. 500 anti-fraud executives. WCM Brazil put her in front of 2,000 leaders at one of the world’s largest strategy and leadership conferences. Key speaking topics AI security and governance Cyber resilience in the AI era AI risk and trust for the enterprise Cybersecurity leadership at board level The evolution of cybercrime AI-enabled fraud and threat response Ideal for Boards and executive committees making AI adoption decisions where governance and security are not yet aligned. CISOs, CIOs and CTOs whose teams are being asked to defend against AI-enabled threats while adopting AI internally. Financial services, healthcare and public sector organisations facing high regulatory exposure on both AI and cybersecurity. Audience outcomes Specific examples of how AI is currently breaking enterprise trust in regulated industries. A maturity check against the Cybersecurity Adoption Lifecycle Model that locates where the organisation sits. The questions a board needs to ask before approving its next major AI initiative. A view of how attackers are using AI today and which enterprise defences are still holding.

About Glenn Wilkinson Glenn Wilkinson is a world renowned security expert with more than a decade of professional experience. He has worked as an ethical hacker for organisations ranging in size from startups to multinational conglomerates and governments. As a Rhodes Scholar he holds two Masters degrees from the University of Oxford. Glenn is available for speaking engagements at corporate events, conferences, after dinner talks, and for TV / news productions.

Why organisations work with Cristina Criddle A direct line into the AI story as it is being reported, from a journalist who breaks news on OpenAI, Google, Meta and TikTok for the FT, not a commentator reading the same coverage as the audience. First-hand authority on platform power and data governance: in 2022 ByteDance admitted its staff used her personal account data to try to identify her FT sources, which gives her an unusually concrete view of how large platforms actually behave. Award-recognised reporting credentials, including gold at the 2023 MHP Group 30 To Watch Journalism Awards for technology coverage. Translates frontier AI development into language a non-technical executive can act on, drawing on a decade across the BBC’s Today Programme, BBC Breakfast and BBC Three, in addition to the FT. Works as keynote, panellist, host and moderator, which makes her useful as both a content voice and a credible chair for senior internal AI conversations. Biography highlights Technology Correspondent, Financial Times, San Francisco, covering Artificial Intelligence. Previously the FT’s Technology Correspondent in London for three years. Former BBC technology reporter across the Today Programme, BBC Breakfast, TV, radio and online. Producer of the BBC Three documentary “The Instagram Effect” (2022) on the platform’s impact on user wellbeing. Gold winner, MHP Group 30 To Watch Journalism Awards 2023, Science, Environment & Technology category. Subject of ByteDance’s admitted 2022 internal surveillance operation, in which staff accessed her location data via her personal TikTok account to try to identify her FT sources. Biography The frontier AI story is being written from a small number of buildings in San Francisco, and most boards are reading it second-hand. Criddle reports it first-hand. As the Financial Times’s Technology Correspondent specialising in AI, she covers OpenAI, Google, Meta and the other labs setting the pace, and the regulators and rival platforms trying to keep up. Before the San Francisco posting, she spent three years as the FT’s Technology Correspondent in London, breaking stories on TikTok, Meta and the wider platform economy. Her reporting record was recognised with gold at the MHP Group 30 To Watch Journalism Awards in 2023 in the Science, Environment & Technology category. Her earlier career at the BBC, across the Today Programme, BBC Breakfast, TV, radio and online, included producing the 2022 BBC Three documentary “The Instagram Effect”, which used insider testimony to examine the platform’s effect on younger users. That mix of investigative reporting and broadcast experience is why she works as both a keynote voice and a chair for senior internal AI conversations. In December 2022, ByteDance admitted that four of its staff had used Criddle’s personal TikTok data to try to identify her FT sources. The company dismissed the staff and restructured its internal audit team. The episode is one of the few publicly confirmed cases of a major platform surveilling a named journalist, and it gives her a concrete point of view on platform governance, data access and trust that boards are increasingly being forced to take seriously. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and the frontier labs Enterprise AI adoption and workplace impact AI regulation and governance Big Tech platform power Data privacy and platform surveillance Social media’s effect on users and society Future of technology and consumer adoption Ideal for Boards and executive committees making capital allocation decisions on AI CTOs, CIOs and Chief AI Officers tracking the frontier labs and policy environment Communications, policy and legal leaders responsible for AI risk and platform exposure Conference programme chairs looking for an FT-credentialled AI host or moderator Audience outcomes A current, named-source view of what is happening inside the major AI labs and how it is likely to land commercially A working understanding of the regulatory pressure on AI and large platforms, and where it is likely to bite Sharper questions to ask internal AI teams, vendors and platform partners about data, governance and safety A clearer sense of what is signal and what is noise in the AI news cycle

Why organisations work with Ben Owen He has spent more than two decades on the operational side of intelligence, from sniper duties in Iraq to leading covert teams against counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and counter-espionage targets. Few cyber speakers can speak from that side of the line. He runs live OSINT demonstrations from the stage, exposing what an attacker can assemble about a named executive in minutes. Audiences leave with a visceral understanding of their own exposure, not a slide on the threat landscape. As co-founder of The OSINT Group and Co-Director EMEA for Fortalice Solutions, he advises corporates and high net worth principals on digital risk every week. The keynote content is drawn from current casework, not historical anecdote. His Hunted profile gives him cultural reach that board members already recognise, which lowers the resistance non-technical executives bring to cyber conversations. Biography highlights Co-founder, The OSINT Group, an intelligence-led cyber security consultancy. Co-Director, EMEA Region, Fortalice Solutions, the global cyber and intelligence firm founded by former White House CIO Theresa Payton. Former British intelligence officer, with operational experience in counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and counter-espionage. Former sniper in the British Forces, deployed to Cyprus, Kuwait, and Iraq. Lead hunter and Head of Intelligence across the UK, US, and Australian versions of Hunted (Channel 4, CBS, Channel 10). Quoted by The National and Transport + Energy on online fraud and EV charging cyber risk. Biography The attack surface that matters to senior leaders is no longer the corporate firewall. It is the LinkedIn post that confirms a travel date, the loyalty programme that leaks an address, the family member whose social profile fills in the gap. Adversaries assemble these fragments into a picture. Most boards have never been shown that picture. Ben Owen has spent his career on the other side of it. He served as a sniper in the British Forces in Cyprus, Kuwait, and Iraq, then moved into the British intelligence services, where he led covert teams running counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and counter-espionage operations. Twenty-five years of operational work sits behind the keynote. He now co-runs The OSINT Group, an intelligence-led cyber consultancy, and serves as Co-Director EMEA at Fortalice Solutions, the firm founded by former White House CIO Theresa Payton. Current client work, on high net worth principals, corporate executives, and institutional risk, supplies the material for his speaking. Television audiences know him as a recurring hunter across the UK, US, and Australian versions of Hunted; corporate audiences see the same skill set turned on their own organisation. On stage he runs live demonstrations. A volunteer’s name and employer are usually enough to build a profile in front of the room. The point is not theatre. It is to compress the gap between abstract cyber briefings and the operational reality a board now has to govern. Key speaking topics Cyber security as a board-level risk Open-source intelligence and digital footprint exposure The human element of modern cyber threats Executive and principal protection in a digital environment Counter-fraud and social engineering Operational leadership under pressure Surveillance, evasion, and the Hunted methodology Ideal for Boards, CISOs, and CROs commissioning a non-technical reset on cyber risk Executive offboarding, principal protection, and family office audiences Sales kick-offs and client events where a recognisable name needs to land a serious message Industry conferences on financial services, energy, transport, and professional services Audience outcomes A working picture of what a determined adversary can learn about a named executive from open sources alone Specific changes to personal digital hygiene that materially reduce exposure within a week A vocabulary for boards to interrogate their cyber and intelligence functions without retreating into IT jargon A sharper sense of where social engineering and OSINT meet, and why the human layer is now the primary breach vector

Why organisations work with Alec Ross He has advised both a US Secretary of State and a global venture capital firm on the same question: where power is moving as technology, capital and national interest collide. Boards get a single read across all three. The Industries of the Future sold into 24 languages and remains a reference text for executive teams framing long-range technology strategy. That gives him a shared vocabulary with global leadership audiences before he opens his mouth. The Raging 2020s offers a specific thesis, not a survey: the social contract between government, business and citizens is broken, and companies that misread the rebalancing will lose licence to operate. Leaders leave with a framework for where regulatory and political risk is actually heading. He built and sat inside the first serious technology policy function at the State Department, then moved to the investor side at Amplo. He speaks to both the regulator’s logic and the cap table’s logic, which most commentators cannot. Named to Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and awarded the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award. Credentials buyers can cite when justifying the booking internally. Biography highlights Senior Advisor for Innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2009 to 2013, in a role created specifically to modernise the practice of diplomacy. Author of two New York Times bestsellers: The Industries of the Future (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and The Raging 2020s (Henry Holt, 2021). Distinguished Professor at the Business School of the University of Bologna; previously Distinguished Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and Senior Fellow at Columbia SIPA. Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm, with director roles across technology, finance, manufacturing, human capital and cybersecurity companies. Co-founder of One Economy, a nonprofit that expanded broadband access for low-income households before broadband policy was a political issue. Named to Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers and holder of the US Department of State Distinguished Honor Award. Biography The Senior Advisor for Innovation job at the State Department did not exist before 2009. It was built for Alec Ross, who spent four years travelling to forty-one countries turning emerging technology into an instrument of US foreign policy under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That mandate, sitting at the join between diplomacy, national security and the technology industry, is the lens he has brought to every role since. The Industries of the Future, published in 2016, mapped the sectors he believed would reorganise the global economy over the following decade: robotics, genomics, the commercialisation of data, the weaponisation of code. It sold into 24 languages and became a fixture on executive reading lists. The Raging 2020s, published in 2021, moved the argument on. The question is no longer which technologies win. The question is whether the contract between governments, companies and citizens holds, and what companies do when it does not. Ross now teaches at the University of Bologna Business School and sits as a Board Partner at the venture capital firm Amplo, with director seats across technology, finance, manufacturing and cybersecurity. He reads a regulatory brief the way a former diplomat does and a growth plan the way an investor does, and has held both jobs in earnest. What that produces for a leadership audience is judgement on questions that sit above the CTO and below the board: where the geopolitical weather is turning, which regulatory frames are about to land, which technology bets will still make sense when the politics catches up. Foreign Policy named him to its Top 100 Global Thinkers for a reason specific to this moment. Very few commentators have worked the diplomatic side, the commercial side and the academic side of the same argument. Key speaking topics Geopolitics of technology and the US to China contest The social contract between governments, companies and citizens Artificial intelligence, data and national competitiveness Cybersecurity as a board-level risk Regulation, antitrust and the future licence to operate Long-range industry disruption and capital allocation Innovation policy and the future of work Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting multi-year technology and geopolitical strategy CEOs, CSOs and heads of government affairs briefing for regulatory inflection points Financial services, technology and industrial leadership teams exposed to US, EU and China policy divergence Conferences convening CEOs, policymakers and investors on the intersection of technology and state power Audience outcomes A sharper read on where regulation, capital and public sentiment are pushing the next decade of technology strategy. A working framework for pricing political and geopolitical risk inside commercial decisions. Named examples of how governments, companies and citizens are renegotiating the social contract, and the implications for licence to operate. A clearer view of which technology sectors are concentrating power, and where corporate strategy has to adjust. An investor and policymaker’s dual perspective on the same question, translated for operators.

About Shivvy Jervis Shivvy is known for helping millions discover the most human-centred, meaningful innovations. She demystifies how they will go on to shape how we do business, secure our futures and elevate our individual potential. How will breakthroughs such as emotionally aware AI, augmented commerce and next-gen connectivity drive sustainable progress for our cities, health and livelihoods? What’s the best way to protect our digital identity or the most fascinating jobs or skills for 2022 and beyond? And how can we apply discoveries about our brain chemistry – such as the science behind why we give up – to build more engaged workforces? These are just a few of the many developments Shivvy studies and presents to enthralled audiences. To date she has headlined over 600 keynotes and broadcasts and is lauded by both the World Economic Forum and TED Talks for her “remarkable ability to demystify complex topics”. Named one of Britain’s leading ‘Women of the Year’ and a ‘Champion of Change’ together with 24 other accolades, Shivvy is also one of Europe’s most booked female forecasters for three years running. Her research is trusted by over 200 organisations, including the likes of Microsoft, the United Nations, Salesforce, Lenovo and the UK Government’s digital division. Shivvy also has strong roots in investigative broadcasting. A former contributor to CNN Asia and Reuters for six years, she has produced over 400+ hours of programming. She has presented a two-part documentary for Discovery Channel, and previously created two streaming video series’ that drew a 14 million-strong audience during their five year run. Finally, what does she stand for? Shivvy champions a move from our current phase of ‘Industry 4.0’ to a more human-centred reality – one she calls Humanity 5.0.

Why organisations work with Nell Watson She works at the technical standards layer. As Vice Chair of IEEE P7001 on Transparency of Autonomous Systems, she helps leaders understand what credible AI governance actually contains, not what it sounds like. She runs the policy interface in Europe. As President of the European Responsible AI Office (EURAIO), she has direct sightlines into how regulation will land on regulated industries. Her book Taming the Machine (Kogan Page) won Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title in 2025 and the Goody Business Book Award in 2024, giving boards a credible reference document, not a popular-press summary. She has built original research that names AI failure modes. Her Psychopathia Machinalis taxonomy gives executives a vocabulary for the behavioural risks of agentic AI systems before those risks become incidents. She translates between engineers and the C-suite. Her Singularity University faculty role and prior work founding a venture-backed machine-learning company mean she speaks both sides of the room. Biography highlights Author of Taming the Machine: Ethically Harness the Power of AI (Kogan Page, 2024). Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2025. Goody Business Book Award 2024. President and Chair of the Supervisory Board, European Responsible AI Office (EURAIO). Vice Chair, IEEE P7001 Transparency of Autonomous Systems; Chair, IEEE ECPAIS Transparency Experts Focus Group. Associate Faculty (AI and Robotics) and Fellow for Ethics, Singularity University. Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council. Senior Scientific Advisor, Harvard Kennedy School’s Future Society AI Initiative. Founder of Poikos (now QuantaCorp), a machine-learning body-measurement company. Co-founder of EthicsNet and OpenEth. Biography The substance of AI governance lives in technical standards, not in mission statements. The IEEE 7001 standard on transparency for autonomous systems sets out measurable, testable levels of explainability; Nell Watson sits as Vice Chair of that working group. That is the layer where boards either earn defensible AI decisions or do not. She also runs the policy interface. As President of the European Responsible AI Office (EURAIO), she advises organisations on how to operate AI for outcomes that hold up under EU regulation. Few speakers carry both the standards seat and the policy seat at the same time. Most carry one or the other, or neither. Her 2024 book Taming the Machine (Kogan Page) became a reference text quickly, winning Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title in 2025 and the Goody Business Book Award in 2024. Alongside it she developed Psychopathia Machinalis, a diagnostic taxonomy for the behavioural failure modes of agentic AI. The taxonomy gives executive teams something they usually lack: vocabulary for what can go wrong inside an AI system before it goes wrong publicly. She is also an operator. She founded Poikos, a machine-learning body-measurement company now trading as QuantaCorp, and teaches AI and Robotics on the Singularity University faculty. The result for an audience is a speaker who can sit between the engineers writing the code and the directors signing off the risk register, and translate without losing precision. Key speaking topics AI ethics and responsible AI governance Transparency and auditability in autonomous systems EU AI Act and the regulatory operating environment Agentic AI risk and behavioural failure modes AI safety and alignment for executive audiences Machine intelligence and the future of work Standards and policy in emerging technology Ideal for Boards and audit committees taking on AI oversight responsibilities Chief Risk, Compliance, and Legal officers in regulated industries CIO, CTO, and Chief AI Officer functions setting governance frameworks Public sector leaders preparing for EU AI Act enforcement Audience outcomes A clear map of where AI governance is being decided, from IEEE standards work to the EU AI Act, and what each layer requires of the organisation. A working vocabulary for agentic AI failure modes, drawn from her Psychopathia Machinalis taxonomy. A direct view of how regulators and standards bodies are framing transparency, bias, and accountability. A sharper sense of which AI investments will survive external scrutiny and which will not.

Why organisations work with Ymir Vigfusson He is a tenured computer scientist at Emory and a practising offensive-security entrepreneur, with three founded companies and two acquisitions. Boards rarely get both registers from the same speaker. His TEDxReykjavik talk on teaching people how to hack has passed 1.8 million views, which means executives often arrive already primed by his argument and ready to engage at depth. Keystrike, his third company, was built specifically for the problem of secure remote access when the user’s machine is already compromised. He has commercial scar tissue on the exact threat model most enterprises now face. He holds an NSF CAREER award for fundamental work on caching and distributed systems, so the technical authority extends well beyond cybersecurity into the infrastructure layer that AI workloads depend on. His guest-researcher role at the CDC, applied to disease-outbreak surveillance, gives him a working analogy for how organisations should model contagion and propagation inside their own networks. Biography highlights PhD in Computer Science, Cornell University; BSc in Mathematics, University of Iceland. Associate Professor at Emory University and director of the SimBioSys lab. NSF CAREER award recipient for the “Rethinking the Cache Abstraction” project. Co-founder of Syndis (acquired by Origo, 2021), Adversary (acquired by Secure Code Warrior, 2020) and Keystrike (current CTO). TEDxReykjavik talk “Why I teach people how to hack” with more than 1.8 million views. Guest researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, applying network science to outbreak surveillance. Biography The cybersecurity industry has a translation problem. Attackers reason in workflows; defenders reason in compliance frameworks. Most senior leaders only hear the second language, which is why most security investment is shaped by audit logic rather than by how an adversary actually moves through a system. Ymir Vigfusson works in both languages. He is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Emory University and director of the SimBioSys lab, where his NSF CAREER-funded research on caching and distributed systems has produced papers at USENIX ATC, VLDB and EuroSys. The same researcher co-founded Syndis, the de facto cybersecurity firm in Iceland (acquired by Origo in 2021), the hacker-training platform Adversary (acquired by Secure Code Warrior in 2020), and Keystrike, where he is now CTO and which won Emory’s Innovation of the Year for a product that secures remote access even when the endpoint is compromised. That dual track shapes how he speaks to leadership audiences. His TEDxReykjavik talk, “Why I teach people how to hack,” has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and lays out the argument that an organisation cannot defend itself against an attacker mindset it refuses to study. He brings the same logic into board conversations: walk through how an adversary would actually compromise this organisation, then decide what to fund. A guest-researcher post at the CDC, where he applies network-science methods to outbreak surveillance, gives him a working model for how threats propagate inside any complex network. The practical result for leadership audiences is a clearer picture of where their actual attack surface sits and which defensive habits change the outcome. Key speaking topics Cybersecurity as a board-level risk The hacker mindset as a defensive capability Secure remote access and the compromised endpoint Distributed systems and the infrastructure layer beneath AI Network science applied to threat propagation Cybersecurity education and the future security workforce Ideal for Boards, audit committees and CISOs commissioning a sharper view of attacker behaviour Chief technology and chief information officers planning resilience investment Banking, healthcare and critical-infrastructure leadership teams with high-value endpoints Innovation and R&D leaders integrating security into AI and cloud roadmaps Audience outcomes A working model for how adversaries actually move through an enterprise network A sharper line between security spend that changes attacker behaviour and spend that satisfies audit A vocabulary for discussing cyber risk with non-technical board members A view of where computational epidemiology and network science inform threat modelling

Having founded a number of successful businesses and worked as Director of the United States’ National Cybersecurity Centre and former CEO and President of ICANN, Beckstrom’s bestselling book The Starfish and the Spider, which examines leaderless organisations, has been translated into over 15 languages. Former Director of the National Cybersecurity Centre Former CEO and President of ICANN Co-author of the bestselling ‘The Starfish and the Spider’ Environmentalist Entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom’s Speaking Style A true leadership expert, Rod Beckstrom can educate and motivate organisations of all sizes to future-proof their business as they plan their structure and evaluate their levels of cyber-security.

Why organisations work with Robert Herjavec Two major business exits anchor the credibility. BRAK Systems sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000, and Herjavec Group’s majority stake sold to Apax Partners in 2021. Senior teams hear from an operator who has built and exited at scale. Seventeen years as an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, evaluating thousands of founder pitches in real time. Audiences get a working investor’s read on what closes a deal and what kills one. A sales-first view of business growth. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark, his Wall Street Journal bestseller, frames sales as the universal skill of business and gives non-sales people a usable discipline. Operator-level cybersecurity context from founding and running Herjavec Group, once one of Canada’s largest information security firms, before its 2022 merger into Cyderes. Useful when boards want the threat landscape explained without a vendor agenda. An immigrant-founder narrative with verifiable outcomes. Arrived in Halifax at age eight from communist Yugoslavia, then built and exited multiple technology businesses while helping launch one of the most successful business reality formats on network television. Biography highlights Founder of Herjavec Group (2003); served as CEO until stepping down in September 2024 following the company’s 2022 merger with Fishtech Group and rebrand to Cyderes Sold BRAK Systems to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000 Original cast member on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut; also a panelist on Canada’s Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank Australia Author of three business books: Driven (2010), The Will to Win (2013), and You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), a Wall Street Journal bestseller Recipient of the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal BA in English literature and political science, University of Toronto Biography Most leaders manage businesses someone else built. Robert Herjavec has founded and exited three. BRAK Systems, the cybersecurity firm he started in his basement, was sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000. Ramp Network, which he ran as VP of Sales, was acquired by Nokia for $225 million. In 2003 he founded Herjavec Group, which grew into one of Canada’s largest information security businesses. Apax Partners bought a majority stake in 2021. After a 2022 merger with Fishtech Group it became Cyderes, where Herjavec served as CEO until September 2024 and remains an investor and board member. He has been an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut. Across seventeen seasons he has heard thousands of founder pitches and decided in real time which to back and which to walk away from. The result is an unusual stockpile of pattern recognition on what closes a deal and what kills one from the investor’s side of the table. His three books work the same vein. Driven (2010) and The Will to Win (2013) were simultaneous Globe and Mail bestsellers about how persistence and self-discipline build careers. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, arguing that sales is a teachable craft any senior leader can use. He won the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Governor-General of Canada for outstanding service. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder mindset Sales as a business discipline Building and scaling technology companies Resilience and persistence in business The cybersecurity threat landscape for enterprise leaders Growth strategy and going from zero to scale Pitch evaluation and the investor’s perspective Ideal for Sales kickoffs and revenue leadership offsites where credibility on selling as a teachable discipline is the priority Annual conferences and flagship events where a marquee, household-name keynote needs to anchor the agenda on entrepreneurship and growth Founder-led businesses and high-growth firms whose audiences want an operator with multiple verified exits behind him Cybersecurity, fintech, and enterprise technology audiences, where his industry pedigree adds weight to the broader entrepreneurship and growth conversation Audience outcomes A sharper read on what actually closes a sales conversation and what kills one before it starts The discipline of starting from zero, told by someone who arrived in Halifax with one suitcase and built three businesses worth nine-figure exits An investor’s lens on how to evaluate ideas and the founders behind them, built from seventeen years inside the Shark Tank panel A working argument that persistence and discipline outperform inherited advantage, with a verifiable career arc behind it: BRAK to AT&T, Ramp to Nokia, Herjavec Group to Apax A board-level perspective on cybersecurity risk informed by two decades inside one of Canada’s largest enterprise security operators