Martin Smith MBE

Martin Smith MBE has had a fascinating and varied 30-year career in the world of security and is now one of Europe’s most experienced corporate and IT security practitioners.

He has a rare combination of extensive professional knowledge and experience, coupled with exceptionally strong communications and management skills.

He is a leader, influencer and strategic thinker with a far-reaching network at the highest levels of the computer security fraternity around the world.

Martin Smith gained his degree in behavioural psychology before spending 16 years as a commissioned officer in the RAF, firstly as a pilot and then assigned to counter-espionage and counter-terrorism duties.

In the late 1980s he transferred to the then emerging field of computer security and in 1990 was awarded Membership of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for this pioneering work.

In 1991 he left the Service to carve out a second career in the commercial sector.

He joined Touche Ross Management Consultants before becoming the UK Senior Director of Corporate Security for Kroll Associates, the world’s foremost commercial counter-intelligence and security organisation. He then joined the Standard Chartered Bank as Head of Information Security.

In 1997, Martin Smith formed a new Business Security company as a proving ground for his unique and inventive approach to corporate and IT security.

Martin and his team have been working with major clients from the financial, commercial and business sectors around the world, primarily reviewing and enhancing corporate security, fraud prevention, counter-terrorism and business continuity strategies and programmes.

They then help their clients to implement wide-ranging IT security improvements, and to introduce effective security and fraud-prevention management, awareness and training amongst the workforces. The Company has successfully proven its overall approach and its detailed methods.

Martin Smith has a refreshing, amusing and captivating approach to the dirty world of corporate crime and violence; he recognises that it is viewed as something that “happens to someone else” and is low on most business managers’ agendas. He therefore avoids the prescriptive approach and makes the subject interesting to everybody and relevant to the cyber-world in which increasingly we operate.

He works closely with senior management to balance business risk against opportunity in order to produce pragmatic and affordable solutions – he has proved to his clients time and again how security can be made to work while contributing directly to their profit and bottom line.

Martin Smith has an enormous personal network amongst the Governmental and commercial security communities in both Europe and the USA. He has been the Chair of Compsec, Europe’s most prestigious computer security conference, and as a result is in regular contact with most of the world’s leading authorities in this field. He has been the Chair of the Computer Weekly Infosecurity User Group comprising some 26,000 IT professionals with security responsibilities in user organisations throughout the UK.

He is an internationally recognised author and speaker on his subject. Over the years he has presented at many leading world security conferences. His papers have been published widely and he is a regular contributor to the many international news networks in Europe and the USA that seek his advice on a variety of security-related subjects.

Speaking topics include:

• Management of Corporate Security
• The Importance of Information Protection
• Trends in Crime and Violence
• Corporate and Industrial Espionage
• Making Security Pay