Public Sector and Private Sector – together for better Cyber Security

Speakers

Michael Powell, Cyber Security Ambassador at Department for International Trade (moderator)

Michael Powell, CISSP is DIT’s interim Cyber Security Ambassador and cyber sector trade specialist in North America. His background includes over 15 years of experience in both offensive and defensive cyber security, law enforcement and trade regulation, and public-private partnerships.

Michael has worked with large companies, academic institutions and start-ups to define and deliver government and commercial cybersecurity solutions. He is a proponent of workforce diversity and has a strong technical background to understand and discuss solutions to complex organizational problems.

When not advising UK companies, he assists SMEs as a Virtual CISO and generally promotes the excellence of the UK cybersecurity ecosystem.

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Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman of the Board at F-Secure Corporation

Risto Siilasmaa is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of F-Secure Corporation, a cyber security company, having served as President and CEO of the company in 1988-2006. He is also a prominent venture capital investor with several unicorns and over 30 active investments via First Fellow Partners, a fund management company he co-founded and where he is the only limited partner.

Previously he was the Chair of the Board of Directors of Nokia Corporation 2012-2020 and Elisa Corporation in 2008-2012. He is a Board member of Futurice Corp. and a member of Komatsu International Advisory Board, a member of the International Advisory Board at IESE Business School, and a member of the Global Advisory Board of Yonsei University School of Business.

Mr Siilasmaa is the Chairman of the Technology Advisory Board appointed by the Finnish Government in 2020. He is a member of the Global Tech Panel, an initiative of the EU High Representative and was a member of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) from 2012–2020.

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Adrian Nish, Head of Cyber Propositions at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence

Dr. Adrian Nish is the Head of Cyber Propositions at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, with responsibility for overseeing BAE's cyber product portfolio, business strategy and investment. Prior to this, Adrian ran the Cyber Technical Services team at BAE, leading areas of Threat Intelligence, Incident Response, and Security Testing.

Adrian's background is predominantly technical, with expertise in cyber data analysis and investigations. He has a passion for geo-politics, the social impact of technology, and the relationship between security and technology. Adrian holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Oxford.

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Daniel Pilkington, Regional Lead for Cyber at Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

Dan is the UK’s regional lead for Cyber, based in the British Embassy Copenhagen. Dan brings over a decade of experience in UK cyber policy, strategy and international engagement – including on the development of UK approaches to public/private partnerships on cyber security.

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Visa Vallivaara, Senior Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Visa Vallivaara is a Senior Scientist of Applied Cryptography in VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. He has been in VTT since 2013 and has over 10 scientific publications from cyber security and applied cryptography.

He was recently a guest researcher at NIST in USA for one year. At NIST, Visa was researching post quantum cryptography (pqc) and participated in pqc standardization.

Currently he is the project manager of national research project PQC Finland. He is also one of the Finland’s top blockchain experts and 2019 he was an invited speaker of Blockchain Central in Davos during World Economic Forum.

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Saj Huq, Director of Innovation at Plexal

Saj is Director of Innovation at Plexal, an innovation company that turbocharges collaboration.

From enabling Transport for London to procure innovation from startups more quickly to helping 72 start-ups raise over £200m through its LORCA cyber accelerator, Plexal works across industry and the government to solve their innovation challenges.

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Stefan Lee, Team Leader at Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland

Stefan Lee is a career diplomat/counsellor at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs since 2004.

Currently heading the team for technology and security at the political department of the MFA. Studies from Hanken School of Economics (political science) and ETH Zurich (peace mediation processes).

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Helvi Salminen, Senior Advisor at Kiisec Oy

Helvi Salminen has worked in information security since June 1990, first as security analyst and from April 2000 to March 2020 as information security manager. Since April 2020 she has been security advisor, and in May 2021 started as board member in a cybersecurity startup.

Before her information security career she has 12 years experience in systems development. Helvi is founder member of Finnish Information Security Association which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2017.

Helvi is qualified CISA & SABSA & was awarded as CISO of the year in Finland 2014.

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Stuart Murdoch, Founder and CEO at Surevine

Stuart Murdoch is Founder and CEO of Surevine, one of the UK’s leading Cyber security companies. Surevine specialises in smart and secure collaboration technology for the National, Homeland and Cyber Security domain, and is relied on by the UK Government to keep them one step ahead of the cyber threat.

Stuart is a Chartered Engineer with a BSc in Computer Science from Royal Holloway, home of the world-leading Information Security Group, and an advanced MSc in Computing from Imperial College, London. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Surrey, a professional member of the BCS (British Computer Society), a member of the IoD (Institute of Directors) and a Liveryman at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. He is a published author in the field of cyber security, most recently as a contributor to The Oxford Handbook of Cyber Security (Oxford University Press, 2021).

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