In this episode, we look at the growth of the cybersecurity industry in Northern Ireland.

What are the reasons for its success, and why does cyber play an important part in Northern Ireland's post-industrial future? And why should CISOs look there for a source of talent?

Our guest is Simon Whittaker, chair of the steering committee for NI Cyber, and CEO of Vertical Structure, now part of Instil.

Our guest this week is Mandy Andress is CISO at Elastic.

Elastic describes itself as a “search AI company”, and is very much at the forefront of modernising enterprise technology.

A host of businesses use Elastic's tools behind the scenes to manage their data, for security and, of course, for AI.

As CISO, Mandy Andress has the dual responsibilities of keeping Elastic secure, and advising customers on security.

In this CISO interview, we hear about her route into cybersecurity and the pressures of dealing with the increasing intensity, or velocity of cyber attacks.

And we discuss why CISOs need to be more aware than ever of their role in providing security not just within their own organisations but across national infrastructure, and the wider economy.

Dr Claudia Natanson is CEO at the UK Cyber Security Council.

The Council, which is funded by the Government's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, acts as an umbrella body for a range of professional bodies in cybersecurity.

It is the organisation behind chartered status for cybersecurity professionals, sets standards and publishes an ethics code, and acts as a voice of the industry: quite a broad mission for an organisation that is only a few years old.

The Council is, though, very well placed to assess the health of the cybersecurity industry across the UK. And, as Dr Natanson says, it faces a number of challenges, including recruitment, retention, diversity, and ensuring organisations understand what they need from their cybersecurity teams.

But what, exactly, does pouring the perfect pint of Guinness have to do with a successful career in cyber?

Interview by Stephen Pritchard

Our guest for the 125th episode of Security Insights is James Bore.

A well-known industry figure and speaker on cybersecurity, James runs the family consultancy firm Bores. He's also an author, book publisher, cyber skills trainer and volunteer.

In this Insights Interview, he shares his forthright -- and sometimes controversial -- views on the way forward for cybersecurity, with editor Stephen Pritchard.

Does cybersecurity blame the victim? What is the relationship between trust and security? And why is investment in security sometimes a bad thing?

Are CISOs leaving the industry in droves?

One survey suggests that as many as one in four senior cybersecurity leaders plans to leave the profession.

The causes include growing responsibilities, increasingly severe threats and ever-greater regulatory burdens.

The result is stress and burn out, with CISOs constantly fighting fires. As one of our guests says, CISOs suffer from an "invisibility of success".

So what can we do? The first step is to recognise the problem; the second is to help CISOs build both organisational and individual resilience.

Our guests are Darren Williams, founder and CEO of BlackFog, which commissioned the research, and Peter Coroneos, founder of mental health not for profit Cybermindz.

How far should you push security tests?

Sometimes, the answer is "to the limit".

In this episode we look at stress testing in cybersecurity. Putting systems under pressure is the only true way to check that they will work, as intended, during a cyber attack.

But how does stress testing differ from pentesting and cyber exercises? How far is too far, and how do security teams capture the right lessons from the testing process?

Our guests are Chris McKean, solutions specialist at NetApp, and Simon Edwards, founder and CEO at SE Labs.

Ransomware remains one of the greatest cyber threats to organisations. Certainly, it is the threat at the top of most boards' agendas.

The reasons are clear enough: ransomware damages reputations, as well as the balance sheet. in the worst case scenario, a business might never recover from an attack.

And ransomware itself is becoming more sophisticated, and so more dangerous. Groups have moved on from simple phishing and RDP attacks to exploiting zero days. And they are as likely to threaten to release confidential information, as they are to encrypt it.

As our guest suggests, ransomware has moved from an attack on availability to an attack on confidentiality.

When it comes to advising on the ransomware threat, few are better placed than Raj Samani. Senior vice president and and chief scientist at Rapid7, Raj is also chief innovation officer at the Cloud Security Alliance, a special adviser at the European Cybercrime Centre and a co-founder of No More Ransom.

Here he discusses the changing ransomware threat, and how organisations should act when they are attacked, with Stephen Pritchard.

What happens when a cyber attack hits? What is it like to be in the eye of the storm, and how can security teams prepare?

A cyber attack is inevitably a highly stressful situation for everyone involved. But planning and exercising goes a long way to at least manage that stress.

Our guest for this episode is Dan Potter, senior director for resilience and cyber drills at Immersive Labs. He also has over 15 years' experience working in resilience in the financial services sector.

As he says, no playbook or incident response plan will be fully effective, unless the business takes the time to test it - and learn the lessons from the exercises they run.

In a new series of interviews with cybersecurity leaders, we meet Jack Mersey, CISO at Westbury Street Holdings.

In an in-depth interview, he discusses threats -- from nation states to business email compromise -- security awareness and culture, and the challenges of ensuring security to a highly distributed business with 26,000 people and over 1000 sites that operates around the clock.

How does a CISO gain the confidence, and support, of colleagues from baristas and chefs to general managers and finance teams?

How can a security team operate internationally and keep headcounts low?

And how can cybersecurity leaders ensure security does not become a blocker?

Interview by Stephen Pritchard

Hacktivist groups have been around almost as long as the public internet.

But their make up, and their goals, have changed.

Hacktivism is no longer about "hacker" or counter culture or protest. Instead, it appears increasingly aligned with political objectives.

And some of today's  groups at the very least aligned to, if not sponsored, by nation states.

Perhaps hacktivism is no longer the right term. Researchers are now talking about groups that set out to undermine trust in both the online and physical worlds, and carry out what some security researchers call “cognitive warfare”.

As part of its 2025 Security Navigator report Orange Cyberdefense tracked one hacktivist group in detail. Our guest is their head of security research. In this episode, he tells editor Stephen Pritchard what his team have discovered, from watching one particular group, and a renewed interest in hacktivism more broadly.