GDPR is a year old. How cute, I remember when we were all excited about it arriving, getting everything ready and all the fuss that was made. Now it’s had its first birthday and it is really starting to grow up. Since its delivery, GDPR has quite rightly been all over the news. Big fines … Continue reading Happy Birthday GDPR
A visit to LORCA
The London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement sounds like an exciting place and, sure enough, it is. I have been thinking about it for quite awhile now as part of our efforts to create a cyber cluster in the region. LORCA has developed an almost mythical status in my mind, a magical place which will … Continue reading A visit to LORCA
It’s all about governance
I have always found presenting to school students daunting and so the prospect of a whole afternoon in front of twenty pupils at Newcastle’s University Technical College, North East Futures, left me with mixed feelings. My trepidation wasn’t helped by the fact that the afternoon was to be spent talking about governance, data protection and … Continue reading It’s all about governance
Building credibility
How can you build credibility? By being credible of course. It is easily said but not so easily done. Hopefully you are aware that I am trying to help build a cyber (information security) cluster in the North East. I want to see the region positioned as a leading player in this important and growing … Continue reading Building credibility
Let’s agglomerate
A few months ago I went to buy some perfume for my wife’s birthday. She had been dropping hints for a couple of weeks and so I thought I was on a safe bet. I set off for the Metro Centre, a shopping mall not far from where I live and went into Debenhams. The … Continue reading Let’s agglomerate
Health and cyber safety
There seems to be a lot of parallels between where we are with cyber awareness and the early days of Health and Safety. I thought this was a unique observation until I raised it at the latest North East Fraud Forum event. The speaker quite rightly pointed out that he had heard such observations before. … Continue reading Health and cyber safety
Building momentum
Building a consensus is hard work, building momentum is even harder. I have been developing a couple of ideas around the Dynamo cyber cluster, CyberNorth, for a few months now. I am sure I have mentioned them before. The first is to create an incubator for cyber startups in the region under the working title … Continue reading Building momentum
Digital hoarding
In a previous blog I said how I had started to build a home archive. I have been working through all of the papers that we keep and scanning the important ones, or those that don’t have email copies, and storing them on a pair of hard drives. One I keep in the house and … Continue reading Digital hoarding
Stadium of Cyber
The sign over the door on one of the conference rooms in the Stadium of Light, Sunderland Football club’s ground, said ‘Magic Moments Bar’. I’m not sure that it was referring to the latest #CyberFest event that was being held in the room next door yet it could well have done. The fifth event in … Continue reading Stadium of Cyber
#CyberFest Tees Valley
This week we have had two firsts in Dynamo’s history. On Thursday we had the first event we have held on Teesside, or Tees Valley as they prefer to call it. On Friday we held our first event in Northumberland, at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult centre on the banks of the river Blyth. I’ll … Continue reading #CyberFest Tees Valley