Former GCHQ director-general for technology, Gaven Smith, has joined the Cyber Monitoring Centre’s Technical Committee

Mr Smith (pictured) is an internationally recognised technology and cyber leader with more than 30 years of experience in UK National Security. Until late 2023, he was the director-general for technology and chief technology officer at GCHQ, during which time he was responsible for the research and development of a wide range of critical UK national security capabilities.

Chair of the CMC Technical Committee and former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, said: “Gaven knows technological security and cyber capabilities as well as anyone in this country. He brings experience, skill and pragmatism to our vital task. I am beyond delighted to have him on board.”

Commenting on his appointment, Gaven Smith said: “I am honoured to be joining a team of brilliant people, all thought leaders in their individual fields of expertise, all united in a common cause of trying to measure the severity of cyber incidents and help UK organisations improve their approach to cyber security.

“I am excited that we will be bringing together data and insights from a variety of partners in order to assess each cyber incident as it occurs – it is only by bringing people together and opening up the conversation that we will solve this challenge. When it comes to addressing systemic cyber risk, the Cyber Monitoring Centre has a key role to play. Hopefully our work will encourage engagement across private and public sectors, creating an empowered community and helping increase cyber security and resilience for all.”

The CMC was established to bring greater clarity and transparency to UK cyber events and enable organisations to better prepare for and respond to these events. The CMC has developed a robust event categorisation methodology that analyses a wide range of event data to assess how widespread events are and their financial impact to UK organisations.

The cyber experts making up the CMC Technical Committee include Sadie Creese, Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Oxford; Dan Jeffery managing director at Daintta and previously lead for the NHS’s National Cyber Programme; Jamie MacColl, research fellow in cyber security at the Royal United Services Institute; and Julian Williams, head of the department of finance at Durham University.

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