Ajike Alli-Ameh, North West Warning, Advice & Reporting Point (WARP)

Ajike Alli-Ameh was the Founding Co-ordinator of iNetwork’s WARP, was instrumental in re-establishing the WARP for the NW and was foundational in the success of the group as it is today.

Alan Boardman, North West Warning, Advice & Reporting Point (WARP)

Alan is the Cyber Security Manager at Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust and is the current Chair of the North West Warning, Advice & Reporting Point. A Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) known informally within the iNetwork as “Cyberman”, Alan is a well-respected, highly capable IT leader who is experienced in developing secure technical strategies to deliver operational results against strategic objectives, as well as establishing effective operating policies across all areas of IT Security. 

Analytical in nature with a deep understanding of the principles of security and infrastructure management, Alan is pillar of iNetwork’s Effective Information Sharing & Security community, regularly sharing threat intelligence and offering security advice across the network, Alan tends to avoid public speaking, but is always happy to discuss IT security issues in small groups.

Brett Walmsley, Royal Bolton Hospital

Brett Walmsley – Chief Technology Officer, Royal Bolton Hospitals. Brett is responsible for the NHS trust’s Security, Infrastructure and Design, delivering high quality care to some 140,000 + patients in Bolton and the surrounding areas. The trust boasts innovation, provisioning a growing number of mobile and IoT devices, wi-fi enabled medical equipment plus data centre and cloud services, whilst ensuring critical patient, financial and clinical research data is protected.

During 2017, Hospitals and GP surgeries in England and Scotland were among at least 16 health service organisations hit by a ransomware attack, using malware called Wanna Decryptor – with reports potentially dozens more were affected. Operations and appointments were cancelled and ambulances diverted at up to 40 hospital trusts. Royal Bolton Hospitals were not affected, no appointments were cancelled or operations cancelled due to the attack. In a pressurised environment where every second counts and could save a life, IT teams need to be able to prioritise threats based on their relevance and severity. Brett Walmsley will be discussing the days of Wannacry and the power of innovation and automation with Cyber Security within an extremely sensitive environment.

Chris Booth, ITHealth

Chris Booth has over 25 years’ experience in IT healthcare. Since 2006, Chris has specialised in cyber security solutions helping NHS trusts to understand how they can better protect themselves whilst reducing costs. Most recently, Chris has worked on a number of large IT security consolidation and compliance projects helping trusts to build a strategic approach to cyber security and ensure they remain confidently cyber assured at all times.

Christopher Capewell, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Resilience & Emergencies Division.

Christopher is a Cyber Resilience Adviser with MHCLG’s Resilience and Emergencies Division (RED). As part of the National Cyber Security Programme, Christopher supports Local Resilience Forums (LRF) in the West Midlands and North West to improve local cyber resilience and response arrangement. He engages with the LRF network to communicate and promote the importance of strong cyber resilience through delivery of training and exercising events. This includes working with the WARPs and the ROCU in the regions to help build a multi-agency partnership which is able to effectively respond to a sustained cyber incident.

Christopher has over five years of experience of working with the private and public sector in the development of regional development and security.

Craig, National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

Craig is a qualified programme and change manager, with over two decades experience supporting internal colleagues and external organisations to transition to new ways of working. 

Since January 2019 he has been working collaboratively with several internal teams and external organisations, including the LGA, SOCITM and WARPs, to support 408 UK councils to make it difficult for illegitimate emails to be sent from their domains.

The NCSC continues to develop its Mail Check tool, which is free to use by the public sector. 

Mail Check makes it harder for attackers to spoof domains by helping the public sector to set up and maintain good Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Keyes Identified Mail (DKIM) and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC).

The partners are campaigning for organisations to protect all their domains, including parked ones and where they use online email such as Microsoft O365 and Google G Suite.

David Willis, Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP)

Chair of iNetwork’s Effective Information Sharing & Security programme and a certified cyber security veteran with four decades of experience. David has worked in health and social care for the past twelve years helping protect digital assets from individual organisation digital systems to national NHS data centres. A professional who spent five years leading the information governance service in one of Greater Manchester’s Acute Hospitals, David is a pragmatic digital advocate who passionately believes that the appropriate sharing of information, whilst protecting the privacy of the individual, will improve the way we deliver care. 

James Cunningham, Core to Cloud

James Cunningham is the co-founder of Core to Cloud, a Cyber Security and Compliance focused solution provider. James will be speaking alongside Brett Walmsley, CTO at Royal Bolton Hospitals. Core to Cloud’s work within the public sector has gained attention in recent years due to the innovative nature of their approach to reducing Cyber Risk.  James has a history of working within the public sector, mostly within the NHS, and the unique challenges organisations are faced with. This has helped Core to Cloud to develop a consultative approach to their work in this sector.

Having built a reputation as a trusted advisor, Core to Cloud have been able to share the successful approaches organisations have taken to combat current and emerging threats. Core to Cloud pride themselves on being a different type of solutions provider, being vendor independent means the only agenda we are working on is yours.

James Hogan, Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS FT

James Hogan is currently the Information Security Manager for Bridgewater NHS Trust and is responsible for the implementation and management of a layered security model designed to protect against cyber risk.  He has 20 years’ experience with the Ministry of Defence and 8 years in Banking, but is now fully committed to developing cyber defence strategies for the NHS.     

Jane Hancer, CC2i

With over 400,000 public sector staff having completed the Dojo cyber training, the power of collaboration is proven. Having brought the first 10 councils together to develop Dojo: Cyber, Jane has led the subsequent collaborations on information governance and Councillor training – which together involved a further 15 councils – and recently ran the Dojo: 2020 consultation on emerging cyber threats.

This session will look at the headlines from the cyber consultation, the Dojo refresher module and the new training for elected members in detail, plus outline other relevant collaborations that are planned for 2020.

John Curtis, Kaleidoscope

With more than 20 years’ experience working in Information Management across Local and Central Government, John is a highly skilled Subject Matter Expert and experienced Information Management professional.

Notable roles include having acted as a Home Office assessor, and as chair of local and national groups to support Information Management, including iNetwork’s Effective Information Sharing & Security programme. Prior to joining Kaleidoscope, he was Head of Information Management (Data Protection Officer) for Sheffield City Council, leading the implementation of its GDPR plan.

John is an expert in Information Management strategies, procedures and policies including audits and discovery, data flow and process mapping as well as Programme and Project Management. 

Jonathan Lee, Sophos

 Jonathan is a cybersecurity expert responsible for representing Sophos across the UK public sector. He manages Sophos’ successful healthcare business and a team of account management professionals. Jonathan has a passion for all matters relating to the NHS and the UK public sector and during his time at Sophos has built a reputation as a trusted advisor to public sector clients and the channel partners that serve them.

Jovian Smalley, GMCA

Jovian joined the Information Governance team at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) in October 2019 as a Senior Information Governance Lead and Deputy Data Protection Officer. Jovian manages a team of IG leads to engage project and service managers across the region and improve information governance practice on service reform and delivery initiatives.

Jovian has worked in information governance and sharing for five years, having previously led the ICO’s Public Services Engagement team, collaborating with the team at GMCA on the Digital DPIA project. Prior to that he managed Stockport Council’s GDPR readiness project, and created case studies for GM Connect whilst at the Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing, a local-national data sharing collaborative.

Natalie Morrissey, Staffordshire County Council

Natalie is the Information Governance Manager at Staffordshire County Council. Natalie has worked in local government for over 30 years – 11 of which has been spent working in the field of Information Governance , she is always looking for new ways to raise awareness in an engaging manner and to assure that Staffordshire County Council’s data and systems are adequately secure.  Natalie is passionate about embedding good Information Governance into the culture of local government.

Oliver, National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

Oliver is a cyber security consultant at the National Cyber Security Centre, working closely with the health and emergency services sectors. The NCSC is the UK government’s technical authority, providing guidance and advice on cyber security for UK organisations.

The Cyber Security Toolkit for Boards has been created to encourage essential discussions about cyber security to take place between the Board and their technical experts. Board members don’t need to be technical experts, but they need to know enough about cyber security to be able to have a fluent conversation with their experts, and understand the right questions to ask.

Phillipa Nazari, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)

Phillipa is the Assistant Director for IG at the GMCA and TfGM as well as being the Deputy Chair of the Effective Information Sharing & Security programme at iNetwork. Philllipa provides strategic direction and oversight to the of the Information Governance service within GMCA  Phillipa also has a GM wide strategic role in leading on the appropriate use of information and data. Phillipa is the Data Protection Officer for the GMCA and Transport for Greater Manchester, a role which is a statutory requirement under the General Data Protection Regulations. Phillipa has worked in the public sector for 13 years, 10 of which have been in Information Governance roles. She was formally the IG Manager and Deputy SIRO for Stockport Council. Phillipa has undertaken a number of IG roles and now has a more strategic focus for not only the GMCA but across Greater Manchester. 

Richard Roscoe, Previous Chair NWWARP

Richard’s career in Information management started in 1983, researching chemical structure databases at Sheffield University, leading to a Masters Degree in Information Studies. In 1985 he joined the Institution of Electrical Engineers, developing search and validation software for their INSPEC database. In 1990 he moved north, eventually becoming an Information Security Specialist with manufacturing companies, delivering ISO-based strategy, business continuity plans and training plans for Cerestar UK and BASF UK respectively.

In 2001 he moved to the Halifax Building Society, negotiating ISO27000-based Security policies for the Halifax Group companies. In 2004 he moved into the public sector, as Information Security and Data Protection Officer for Sefton Council. Here he was also able to work closely with iNetwork as a board member of the EISS and Exec Boards, and as the Chair of the North-West WARP. In 2008 Richard also qualified as a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM). In 2013 Richard left Sefton, and has since worked mainly as a locum with organisations such as Manchester City Council, and Salford City Council, advising and working on Data Protection and Information Risk related projects. 

Sam, National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

Sam is a Software Engineer with a Masters in Mathematics. Sam joined the NCSC Mail Check team in the summer and is supporting our Go Live plans.  Sam has been working on both back-end and front-end development, but given his natural flair for User Experience / Interface, is starting to focus on making the front-end user interface more engaging and accessible.  Sam is keen to know how you think Mail Check could work better for you.

Sarah Gallear, Previous Chair NWWARP

Starting with a degree in Information Management, followed by an MSc in Computing, Sarah has over eight years’ experience in information security at a local authority growing this from a newly created role for one through to a small team when she eventually moved on. Moving the authority to compliance with ISO 27001 and the NHS IG Toolkit was aided by her involvement with the NW WARP which she went on to Chair.

In 2014  Sarah moved into the role of Information Governance Manager and Data Protection Officer. Whilst she has since moved roles Sarah is still working with ICT and her former information security colleagues on a regular basis as the two areas are quite closely linked.

Outside of the day job,  Sarah enjoys the creative arts such as music, photography and literature. Sarah is in the final year of her distance learning photography degree, and specialises in the varied subjects of landscape and aviation photography.

Stephen Girling, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)

Stephen is responsible for managing Information Governance projects at the GMCA, and supporting the Information Governance team in carrying out their strategic function.

Stephen started his career in projects as a Business Analyst with a private University before moving on to a law firm, and then becoming a Project Manager at Trafford Council and now the GMCA. Stephen has previously project managed a GDPR implementation at Trafford Council and since joining the GMCA in January 2019, has been the project manager for the Digital Data Protection Impact Assessment project. 

Shelley Heckman, iNetwork

Shelley is the Director of iNetwork and recipient of the GoON NW Digital Leaders Award.

Shelley has previously acted as the Programme Lead for iNetwork’s Innovative Access to Public Services programme which included supporting public sector organisations to understand: customer insight, social media, CRM application and integration, channel shift, mobile and agile working in public sector, and business continuity planning.