Category Archives: Skills Development

The application of AI for cyber defence: RSAC CISO Bootcamp

It was great to share my views on AI governance and the application of AI for cyber defence at the RSAC CISO Bootcamp.

I loved the audience participation – it’s a great community, and it’s a privilege to be able to exchange actionable tips with my peers.

Another wonderful day packed with practical sessions on cyber risk, board reporting, crisis response exercise practice, frontier AI model risk management, data breach mitigation and more.

Where else would you talk to the Deputy CISO of Anthropic and the former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on the same day?

Human connection in a digital world

Two leadership programs completed 📚

The AGSM Professional Forum was about complexity – and specifically the costs that never hit a balance sheet: reputational damage, talent attrition, strategic drift. The masterclass dropped us into a scenario that escalated in real time, with no playbook and no obvious right answer. Does your week sometimes look like that?

“Learn to Lead” made the case that human connection as a strategic capability – and one that matters more, not less, as AI reshapes how we work.

Security proves it daily: the strongest controls fail without trust, judgment and people who feel safe enough to flag the thing that looks off.

I particularly liked the idea of cognitive upsizing when using AI – yes, offload tasks to the machine, but use the freed up bandwidth for deeper thinking and to solve even more ambitious challenges.

The throughline across both: lead through uncertainty instead of waiting for a certainty that isn’t coming, and pair the data with real human connection. Neither is enough on its own.

Grateful to the facilitators and the people I learned alongside.

A lecture on human-centered approaches to cyber security

I enjoyed talking to students completing their Global MBA and MSc in Digital Transformation with the University of Hull Online about human-centered approaches to cyber security.

My lecture helped reinforce the idea that cyber security is a socio-technical challenge that has deep behavioural contingencies.

Cyber is a business risk and I’m glad it’s increasingly featured in business degree curriculums beyond computer science. My book, the Psychology of Information Security, helps bridge the gap between organisational and cyber strategy.

AWS Summit 2026: AI is moving fast, security is catching up

There is a shift happening in how the industry talks about agentic AI security. A year ago the conversation was speculative – what might go wrong, what we might do about it. Now it is specific. The platforms, primitives and patterns for operating agents safely exist as named things you can point at on a slide. The vocabulary is converging across vendors. The reference architectures are documented.

In this blog I explore the themes that mattered most, and what they mean for security teams.

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AI-enabled security at the speed of business

Today, organisations are caught between two opposing forces. On one side is the drive for operational efficiency through digital transformation and AI adoption. On the other is an asymmetric cyber threat landscape.

As adversaries leverage AI to increase the scale and sophistication of attacks overwhelming already stretched cyber teams, defenders must do the same by using AI to strengthen security.

The traditional security model is reactive. When a threat is detected, a human must review, validate and remediate. In the time it takes an analyst to finish their first coffee, an AI-driven adversary can exfiltrate sensitive data.

For organisations that depend on customer trust and regulatory compliance, “responding as fast as we can” is no longer within risk appetite. Humans cannot scale to match the speed of automated code.

AI is becoming central to the future of cyber defence. While much of the industry focuses on automating security operations triage, the true power of AI lies in automating complex, proactive security and compliance functions that previously required thousands of human hours.

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My booked named #1 Amazon Best Seller

Excited that my book just hit #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Thank you to everyone who read, recommended, reviewed and supported this project – I couldn’t have done it without you. If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear what resonated most.

If you haven’t read it – it’s currently on offer in some Amazon stores, so get your 23% discount while you can!

And yes – it’s technically #1 in the very specific category, which is slightly amusing… I suspect it’s a hit with late-night cyber security enthusiasts rather than beach readers!

AI Agents and Security

We are entering the agentic era – an inflection point defined by AI systems that can reason, plan and take action autonomously. This shift may be among the most consequential technological transformations of our generation, and it carries an equally significant obligation: to ensure these systems are designed, governed and deployed in ways that earn and sustain trust.

I completed a 5-Day AI Agents Intensive Course where we dove deep in Google’s open source Agent Development Toolkit. In this blog, I’ll share key takeaways and practical suggestions so you can navigate this shift and learn to build AI agents of your own.

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First patrol done


I recently qualified as surf lifesaver. Starting up as less than a confident ocean swimmer, this 8-week Bronze Medallion course definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone! I learned rescue techniques, first aid, resuscitation and how to operate in rough conditions.

Some lessons I learned apply to leadership and cyber security: practice beats theory, situational awareness matters, clear communication saves time (and sometimes lives) and simple tools often outperform complexity. Most of all, the course reinforced humility – competence grows through steady practice and teamwork.

Grateful for the experience and the reminder that fundamentals matter in any high-risk role. Stay safe!