2021 African Commonwealth Virtual Conference and Workshops
Thank you for your interest in the 2021 African Commonwealth Virtual Conference and Workshops.
We have a wide range of expert speakers from the UK Government, our delivery partners and colleagues.
22 November -
02 December 2021
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister for South Asia, the United Nations and the Commonwealth
Lord Ahmad is the Minister for South Asia, the United Nations and the Commonwealth at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). He was first appointed as the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict and as Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the United Nations on 13 June 2017. He was educated at Rutlish School and London South Bank University (LSBU) as well as the Chartered Institute of Financial Services.
Please go to https://www.gov.uk/government/people/lord-ahmad-of-wimbledon for full details of his career in politics and finance.
Chris Philp MP, Permanent Under Secretary of State (Minister for Technology and the Digital Economy)
Chris Philp was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 17 September 2021.
He was previously Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office and Ministry of Justice from 13 February 2020 to 16 September 2021. Before that, he was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice from 10 September 2019 to 18 December 2019 and Minister for London at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government from 18 December 2019 to 13 February 2020.
For further information on his current role, please go to https://www.gov.uk/government/people/chris-philp-mp
Mark Challen, Head of International Strategy and Capabilities, Home Office
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Mark Challen is a Senior Civil Servant who leads the International Strategy and Capabilities Directorate at the Home Office. Mark is responsible for the delivery of a wide-ranging security portfolio which includes international capability building programmes across multiple countries in support of Home Office and UK Government’s strategic objectives. During his long career, he has worked in many high profile government departments focused on counter-terrorism.
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Will Middleton is the Director for Cyber and Critical Technologies at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. He is responsible for leading the UK’s international policy, programmes and people to deliver the UK’s National Cyber Strategy. Before taking up the role in June 2020, Will was Additional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Will has worked for the British Government in Pakistan, Spain and the US. Prior to joining the FCO in 2002, he worked as a business journalist with the Sunday Times. He graduated with a BA in History and M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University.
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Will Middleton
Dr Robert L Nowill
Bob is Executive Chair of The Board at the Cyber Security Challenge UK Ltd, an independent security Consultant Director and Advisor, and a Trustee of The Cyber Trust.
He was the Director for Cyber and Assurance at BT Security until 2013, and was the Director of Technology & Engineering and Board Member at GCHQ to 2005. His career has also included periods with UK MoD, in The Netherlands with The SHAPE Technical Centre, research at Cambridge University Engineering Department, and as a non-Exec Director with IRM.
Bob is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered IT Professional, a Fellow of the IET and of the BCS, and a Founder Fellow of CIISec.
Dr Emma Philpott MBE
Dr Emma Philpott MBE: Emma is CEO of the IASME Consortium Ltd, a company which focuses on information assurance for small companies and the supply chain. IASME worked with the UK government to develop the Cyber Essentials scheme and was awarded the contract to be the sole NCSC Cyber Essentials Partner from April 2020. IASME and the network of more than 240 Certification Bodies certify more than 1,300 companies per month.
Emma is also Founder and Manager of the UK Cyber Security Forum, a not-for-profit organisation leading an initiative to train unemployed neuro-diverse adults in cyber security and supporting them to find employment.
Dr. Tadas Jakštas
Dr. Tadas Jakštas is a cybersecurity capacity building expert with a lot of experience in managing international security and defence projects within various NATO and EU organizations.
At NRD Cyber Security Tadas is responsible for public and private sector cybersecurity strategy and policy building as well as CIIP. He is a regular lecturer at Baltic Defence College, Swedish Defence University and NATO school Oberammergau and is still an active member of defence industry – he is a NATO Civil Expert and is focusing his efforts on improving Alliance’s resilience against conventional and unconventional threats.
Rowland Johnson
As CREST President, Rowland is focused on driving initiatives to deliver increased engagement across the 250+ CREST members and all CREST qualified individual globally. He is responsible for working internationally with governments, regulators and other key industry stakeholders to build stronger technical cyber security ecosystem.
A former member of the CREST GB Executive, serving between 2014 and 2020, he has been a dedicated supporter of the organisation for many years. He was instrumental in CREST’s international growth, playing an integral role in the creation of CREST chapters in Singapore, USA and Hong Kong.
Rowland was a founding director of cyber security company Nettitude and oversaw its acquisition by Lloyd’s Register in 2018. Following the acquisition, he worked with the leadership team as a strategic advisor focussing on global growth.
Rowland has worked closely with international governments and regulators to bring about increased levels of capability in the Penetration Testing, Threat Intelligence, Incident Response and Security Operations Centre markets.
Samantha Alexander
Samantha Alexander is the Interim Executive Director at CREST International.
Samantha has been the project lead over the last 2 years on the CREST Maturity Assessment for Global Eco-Systems, where the focus has been looking at the maturity of the Cyber Eco-Systems in Africa and Asia.
Working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the Central Banks in each of the focus Countries, to identify areas for improvement.
Samantha has also lead the CREST accreditation team, creating and international accreditation programme for Cyber Security service providers. Samantha has worked with government and regulators internationally to create cyber frameworks, and schemes.
Rob Dartnall
Rob Dartnall is the Chair of the CREST GB Executive, Member and Vice-Chair of the CTIPS (Cyber Threat Intelligence Professionals) board, and CREST Threat Intelligence Exam Author and Assessor. He also supports Gartner as an Associate Director for Intelligence and travels the world speaking in various forums discussing Cyber Threats, building Intelligence capability, creating trusted sharing communities and advising on the building resilient Critical Infrastructure for Governments, Regulators and Central Banks
Rob is also the Head of Intelligence and CEO at Security Alliance. Over the last decade Rob has worked in the Intelligence Community both in the private and public sectors, giving him a diverse and unique understanding of the Threat Landscape. Rob has performed hundreds of Threat and Cyber Resilience Assessments across multiple regions and sectors, with particular focus on delivering CBEST, TIBER and iCAST engagements across financial services. For the last 5 years this work has focused on building information and intelligence sharing frameworks and communities for multiple countries, Central Banks and Global Institutions.
Rob has a 1st Class BA Hons in Intelligence and Security, is a CREST Certified Threat Intelligence Manager (CCTIM) and (ISC)2 Certified Information Systems Security professional (CISSP).
Piotr Kijewski
Piotr makes things happen as the Shadowserver Foundation CEO, and also coordinating large-scale data collection and analysis projects as well as Shadowserver's CSIRT relationships. He has a strong CSIRT background, working at NASK in Poland for 14 years at the CERT Polska (CERT.PL) team. He was the Head of the CERT Polska team from 2010 - 2016, expanding its sensor projects, malware analysis and malware disruption capability. Piotr’s interests include threat intelligence, incident response, honeypot technologies (he is a member and ex-Director of the Honeynet Project) as well as botnets/malware networks (which he likes to take down).
Stewart Garrick
Stewart has worked for the Shadowserver Foundation for 6 years. Previously 30 years in UK Law Enforcement (culminating as a Senior Investigating Officer in the National Crime Agency). As career detective he worked primarily on major crime units engaged on both proactive and reactive investigations, including many high profile cybercrime cases as the senior investigator - such as the Dridex and Gameover Zeus botnet takedowns. More recently he works in LE supporting roles for Shadowserver. He is currently actively engaged in multiple ongoing international investigations. He understands the operational challenges and differing evidentiary restrictions and capabilities across the EU and worldwide. His focus is always to help Law Enforcement achieve their Intelligence and evidential needs in ways they can actually use. Qualifications: MSc in Countering Organised Crime and Terrorism at UCL and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).
Jon Flaherty
Joining Shadowserver in 2016, Jon brings a range of skills and experience from UK Law Enforcement cyber crime investigation to the Foundation.
Engaging in consumer outreach, incident handling and the training of constituents in the use of Shadowserver public benefit services allows Jon the opportunity to deliver current threats and insights to all areas of the cyber community.
Of specific interest to Jon is international liaison and with the support of key public/private sector partners, the upskilling of developing cyber regions and National CERTs to ensure the effective use and understanding of Shadowserver’s bespoke datasets for a more secure internet.
Francisco Fonseca
Francisco is VP and GM of the National Cybersecurity line of business for BitSight. As entrepreneur he co-founded Crashless and AnubisNetworks, that were acquired by Claranet and BitSight respectively. Prior to that he worked in Vodafone. He has taught at Moderna and Nova Universities and holds a degree in Management and Computer Science Francisco has over 15 years experience in the telecommunication industry implementing and managing email platforms for corporate and ISP environments.
Anat Lewin
Hagai Mei-Zahav
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Anat Lewin is a Senior Digital Development Specialist at the World Bank and co-Lead of the Cybersecurity Community of Practice at the World Bank. She leads policy advice and investment lending activities in Cybersecurity, Data Governance, Data Protection and Digital Government in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Anat advises developing country governments on establishing good practice Cybersecurity, Data Governance and Data Protection policies, strategies, institutional governance frameworks, technical and operational capabilities and digital skills programs. She leads activities that assist African governments – for instance Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Somalia - in implementing reforms supported by large-scale financing by the World Bank. Her analytical work has focused on accessing mobility data by creating anonymized and aggregated datasets derived from call detail records of telecom operators.
Anat holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University in New York and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the University of Toronto in Canada, Trinity College. She studied International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and advanced Arabic at the University of Jordan in Amman.
Prior to joining the World Bank in 2000, Anat worked for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Ethiopia. She speaks English, German, French, Hebrew and Arabic.
Hagai Mei-Zahav is a Cybersecurity Specialist with the World Bank’s Digital Development global practice. His focus is on promoting cybersecurity global initiative, working collaboratively across sectors and regions, addressing World Bank’s client growing demand. He is also supporting bank’s operational teams advising governments on advancing their cyber resilience, designing and implementing strategies and deploying cyber solutions. Hagai is Co-Leading the World Bank’s Community of Proactive on Cybersecurity.
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Prior to the World bank, Hagai worked as director for International Cooperation at Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, leading business development initiatives with Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. Hagai is a professional diplomat and holds Bachelor of Science in Information Management, and master’s in business administration.
Osei Bonsu Dickson,
Barrister
Dickson is an internationally known national security lawyer, author and adjunct law lecturer. He is Chief Legal Advisor at the Ministry of National Security of the Republic of Ghana and one of Africa’s leading experts in the area of Cyber Security Law and Policy. Since 2017, he has served as National Coordinator of the Ghana – United States Security Governance Initiative (SGI) Secretariat which focuses national security efforts on cyber security, maritime strategy, border management and security governance in sub-Saharan Africa. He chairs the International Advisory Council of CSDS Africa, the Regional Planning Committee of CyberX Africa 2022, is a member of the Governing Board of Ghana’s Financial Intelligence Center, the Ghana Boundary Commission, the National Civil Aviation Security Committee, and other national and regional bodies concerned with cyber security. He has 22 years’ experience working in cyber intelligence, legal practice, academia, as well as service at the highest echelons of Ghana’s national security. Dickson was educated at University of Ghana, the Ghana School of Law and Harvard University. He is a regular speaker at international conferences on cyber and national security risk.
Kaja Ciglic, Senior Director, Microsoft
Kaja Ciglic leads Microsoft’s work on digital peace, focusing on encouraging international peace and stability online. Previously, she worked on the company’s international cybersecurity policy work. Before joining Microsoft, Kaja led the APCO Worldwide’s technology practice in Seattle, and worked as a director in APCO Worldwide’s Brussels office.
She holds a BSC in international relations and history, and a MSC in European politics, both from the London School of Economics.
Dima Sari, Government Affairs Director, Middle East & Africa, Microsoft
Dima leads government affairs for Microsoft in the Middle East and Africa. Her focus includes work to support the adoption of legal and regulatory norms which enable an inclusive and trustworthy digital economy, managing some of the complex geo-political issues relating to tech, and fostering partnerships with the private and the public sector to drive societal impact. Dima’s background is in comparative law, governance, politics, and social contract negotiations particularly in cross-border environments. Dima joined Microsoft from Governance House, a political consultancy focused on rule of law and governance. She was previously associate general counsel for Yahoo! in London and had worked for some of the world's international law firms. Dima holds a master’s degree in IP and Technology Law from Paris XII University, and a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Law.