Ciaran Martin appointed chair at Cyber Monitoring Centre

The Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) today announced the appointment of Ciaran Martin as its chair of the technical committee.

On 1 January 2024, the CMC launched as a not-for-profit organisation. The CMC represents a milestone in the UK’s approach to tackling cyber events. Its role is to categorise them on a scale of one to five. This will be based on how widespread they are and their financial impact to UK organisations. This will bring greater clarity and transparency to complex incidents. It will also enable UK organisations to better prepare for, and respond to, these events.

The CMC will collaborate with partner organisations to collect pertinent data about cyber events. Its technical committee will subsequently review the data to determine their category.

Ciaran Martin will chair the technical committee.

He previously set up and led the UK’s world-leading National Cyber Security Centre. He is also leading advisor to a number of governments on cyber security.

Ciaran is joined by other UK leading cyber experts including: Sadie Creese, professor of cyber security at the University of Oxford; Dan Jeffery, managing director at Daintta; Jamie MacColl, research fellow in cyber security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI); and Julian Williams, head of the department of finance at Durham University.

Martin stated; “I am excited to be involved in the Cyber Monitoring Centre. It addresses a key challenge in UK cyber risk response, namely trying to quantify the impact of systemic cyber events as they are occurring. This whole area of measuring the severity of incidents has proved a really tricky one but if we can crack it we can hugely improve the way we deal with cyber security.”

CEO of the CMC, William Mayes, added: “Entirely independent of any one company, organisation or sector and made of individuals with extensive and different experiences, our technical committee is a vital component to ensure a trusted event categorisation.”

The CMC will be in an incubation and development phase in 2024. During this period, the CMC and technical committee will not publicly disclose event categorisation. Instead, they will learn from events to enhance the categorisation methodology. Public release of event categorisation will commence in 2025.

Image: Ciaran Martin, CMC.

Emma Cockings Emma is a content editor for Claims Media. Emma is a experienced writer with a background in client-centric personal injury for a major firm. She has attended and reported on multiple brokerage events throughout her career.