Calum’s Corner – May 2019

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The theme for our May meeting was how to deal with a cyber security breach.  The session was expertly facilitated by Cyber Rescue who set up a board-room simulation of a breach situation in which we were asked to decide on appropriate responses at each stage.   The impact of a breach on all aspects of an organisation quickly became clear and there was a lot of animated discussion as to trade-offs between communication and certainty,  who needed to be involved when, and what the priorities were at each stage.

Kevin Duffey set the challenges at each stage, helped by his colleagues at Cyber Rescue who do this on a daily basis and were able to provide useful insights at each stage.   There was also a prize, £4999 worth of cyber-security consulting services.   The prize was awarded to Richard Owen who chairs Evolve Pensions Ltd,  and who is looking forward to working with Cyber Rescue to ensure his own organisation is well prepared for possible security breaches.  For anyone wanting to know more about Cyber Security, take a look at www.linkedin.com/company/cyber-rescue-alliance/

The session was well attended with the XTEND membership being supplemented by 21 guests, most of whom had never attended our meetings before.   We were hosted by the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists,  well represented by Alan O’Connor who gave a short introduction to the Guild system and WCIT themselves.   As always, the session was followed by drinks and canapés, providing an opportunity for members and guests to follow up on the discussions that had started and make useful connections between themselves.

Our next session is on the 3rd June and we will be at Fox Williams LLP,  10 Finsbury Square London, EC2A 1AF.   The speaker is Simon Lawson, who is Chairman of a large building supply business and who will be talking about how the business has grown to its current size of £100m by staying true to its basic principles.   This will be followed by drinks and canapés and an opportunity to network or follow up further with Simon.  It will be a great session and I hope many of you will be able to join us there.

Calum Byers
Chair, XTEND