About the Speaker

Ciaran Martin is Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He advises several private sector organisations on cybersecurity strategies and is one of the leading global authorities in the field of cyber security policy.

Prior to this, Professor Martin founded the UK’s world-leading National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCHQ) and headed it for the first four years of its existence. Leading a fundamental shift in the UK’s approach to cyber security, Professor Martin successfully advocated for a wholesale change of approach towards a more interventionist posture. The NCSC model has been studied widely and adopted in countries like Canada and Australia.

Professor Martin is also a 23-year veteran of the UK Government, working directly with five Prime Ministers and a variety of senior Ministers from three political parties. He held senior roles within the Cabinet Office, including Constitution Director (2011-2014), which included negotiating the basis of the Scottish Referendum with the Scottish Government and spearheading the equalising of the Royal Succession laws between males and females in the line; and director of Security and Intelligence at the Cabinet Office (2008-2011). Between 2002 and 2008 he was Principal Private Secretary to the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service and Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury.

In addition, Professor Martin has also assumed an advisory role at both Garrison and Paladin Capital.

Abstract of Talk

From Cyber Security to Tech Security – How Geopolitics and Hardware Have Transformed How We Think About Cyberspace.

Monday, 16 October 2023

For more than two decades when we’ve talked about ‘cyber security’ we’ve been – consciously or otherwise – referring to computer network security and software. It’s been about hacking, and how to stop it. That might be operationally hard, and some nation states have proved powerful adversaries. But conceptually it is straightforward – make the hackers’ tasks as hard as possible.

But over the past few years our concept of security in the digital age has changed profoundly and is now much more complicated. The US-led west and China are competing for control and leadership of the next phase of technology and the contest is about cables, chips, and data centres, not who has the cleverest and sneakiest network operators.  This has major implications for how all societies think strategically about their security in the digital age.