Ciaran was the first CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). In September 2020, he was appointed Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations at the Blavatnik School of Government, the University of Oxford. Prior to joining GCHQ, Martin was Constitution Director at the Cabinet Office from 2011, helping to agree on the framework for the Scottish independence referendum.

From 2008 to 2011, he was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the Cabinet Office. His public service career has also included a series of roles elsewhere in the Cabinet Office and in HM Treasury and the National Audit Office (NAO). In January 2023, Ciaran joined the SANS Institute as director of its CISO Network and Summits EMEA.

Homaira is an award-winning thought leader in the sectors of Cybersecurity, Internet of Things, Supply Chain Visibility, Artificial Intelligence, and Enterprise Software. She founded AKnowledge Partners in 2012 with the goal of providing C-level executives, companies, and private equity firms with unique and proprietary investment theses, and building and implementing adaptive growth and investment strategies. 

She was a Non-Executive Director of Gemalto NV and of Veolia Environnement S.A., Chair and CEO of SkyBitz, Inc., Managing Director of TruePosition Inc., Non-Executive Director of Covisint Corporation and US Pack Logistics LLC. Homaira serves on the Board of Directors of several publicly traded companies including Santandar, Temenos, and Work Fusion.

Gary McGraw is co-founder of the Berryville Institute of Machine Learning. He is a globally recognized authority on software security and the author of 8 best-selling books on this topic. His titles include Software Security, Exploiting Software, Building Secure Software, Java Security, Exploiting Online Games, and 6 other books. He is also Editor of the Addison-Wesley Software Security series. Dr. McGraw has also written over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Gary serves on the Advisory Boards of Legit, Irius Risk, MaxMyInterest, Protopia AI, Red Sift, and Secure Code Warrior. He has also served as a Board Member of Cigital and Codiscope (acquired by Synopsys) and as Advisor to CodeDX (acquired by Synopsys), Black Duck (acquired by Synopsys), Dasient (acquired by Twitter), Fortify Software (acquired by HP), and Invotas (acquired by FireEye). Gary produced the monthly Silver Bullet Security Podcast for IEEE Security & Privacy magazine for thirteen years. His dual PhD is in Cognitive Science and Computer Science from Indiana University where he serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering.

John N. Stewart is currently an Angel Investor at Talons Ventures. Previously, he formed and led Cisco’s Security and Trust Organization, which underscores the company’s commitment to address two of the most critical and top-of-mind issues for boardrooms and world leaders alike. Throughout his career, Stewart has led or participated in widely-ranging security initiatives from IT design for elementary schools to national security programs. He is on the Syracuse University’s College of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Council. John serves on the Board of Directors of several publicly traded companies.

John R. Levine is an Internet Author and Consultant specializing in email infrastructure, spam filtering, and software patents. He chaired the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), is President of CAUCE (the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email), is a member of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Stability and Security Advisory Committee, and runs Taughannock Networks. He has co-authored many books, including The Internet For Dummies, UNIX For Dummies, and Fighting Spam for Dummies. He was also the Mayor of the village of Trumansburg, New York, United States from March 2004 until March 2007.

Mark is a Venture Partner with Sands Capital Ventures. His experience includes working as an engineer for the CIA where he developed covert and clandestine communication systems for over a decade. He left the CIA to lead Cigital’s software security practice where he worked with a talented crew that included Brad Arkin and Cigital’s CTO Gary McGraw. Together they built out a Fortune 500 clientele that included Microsoft, Mastercard, Pfizer, Fiserv, Symantec, the US Federal Reserve, and the UK National Lottery.

Mark’s focus on emergent technologies then led him to join In-Q-Tel, where as VP of Technology he led security investments for the US Intelligence Community for more than 9 years. His investments included ArcSight (IPO), SilverTail (acquired by RSA), FireEye (IPO), and Veracode (acquired by CA Technologies). In 2012, Mark founded Mobile System 7, one of the first cybersecurity companies to detect threats and protect access based on user behavior analytics. He’s a licensed Professional Engineer and holds 4 U.S. patents.

As SVP, Chief Security and Trust Officer, Brad Arkin leads Cisco’s Security and Trust Organization, whose core mission is to ensure Cisco meets its security and privacy obligations to its customers, regulators, employees, and stakeholders.

Before joining Cisco, Brad was Adobe’s first Chief Security Officer and grew the security function from just a few employees to over 600 globally. Brad serves as an Advisory Board member for both the Silicon Valley Global Innovation and Sands Capital Ventures Industry organizations and sits on the program committee for the RSA Executive Security Action Forum.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from the College of William and Mary, a Master of Science in Computer Science from George Washington University, and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University and London Business School.

Markus Schumacher is a software security expert and worked many years on the “shifting left” idea, that is as early as possible in the software lifecycle. He pioneered the concept of “Security Patterns” and wrote the first books around this topic. Markus has a PhD in Computer Science and worked with students in a “Hacker Contest” mode teaching them how to attack and defend IT systems. He has organized the first “Hackathon” during the German speaking SAP User Group’s (DSG) technology days event.

Today, Dr. Schumacher teams up with companies that like to grow like SecurityBridge, Turnkey, and Irius Risk. This covers strategical planning, discussion of financing options, helping during the due diligence, the sale itself, and supporting PMI projects. Before that he was General Manager at Onapsis that acquired his company Virtual Forge mid of 2019. As co-founder, CEO, and managing director of Virtual Forge, he was responsible for the go to market, sales, and admin part of the company. He was also the driver for the long- term planning and the sale of the company. Markus initiated the companies change from consulting to products and he kicked off the development of the flagship product CodeProfiler for ABAP and other pioneering security solutions for SAP environments. Before Virtual Forge, he was ambassador of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure IT (SIT) and leader of their department "Security and Embedded Devices". Earlier, he worked as product manager at SAP for the NetWeaver platform and led key projects in the (by that time) new ByD solution development (TCO reduction reporting to the board).