Ian Cook has held senior technical and management positions at the UK NHS, Tricentrol Oil Corporation, Saudi American Bank, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Pentest Ltd, Barclays Bank and Team Cymru. On leaving Team Cymru in 2014, he was awarded the title ‘Team Cymru Emeritus’ which is conferred upon Cymraeg who retire after a particularly noteworthy career and is a mark of distinguished service.
Ian is a true cybersecurity veteran. When he first started in the industry, over 43 years ago, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, CISCO and Amazon didn’t exist, PCs had not yet been invented and storing the world's business and personal data on something called “The Cloud” would have sounded like classic science fiction, as would the notion of criminals hiding out in something known as the “Dark Web”. “Cybercrime” itself is another term that would have sounded as if it might have sprung straight from the pages of Arthur C. Clarke.
He is very happy to share his vast experience with industry newcomers and currently provides Virtual CISO and mentoring Services to SME’s and start-ups as well as acting as a Talent Scout for VC's and Angels. He is also a mentor at the Cylon and HutZero startup accelerators and is on Advisory Boards at IOActive, CTM360 and Assuria. Ian plans to retire in October 2020, which will give him additional time to help security professionals cope with the growing mental health issues caused by being in a job where you are never off duty and never have adequate resources. His mantra is: “It’s OK not to be OK.”
Ian first joined FIRST as the Citibank FIRST Representative in 1997 and attended the Annual Conference in Bristol which was hosted by JANET-CERT. From this time Ian has been an active member and has sponsored many companies into FIRST and shepherded them thru the membership process. Ian was elected to the FIRST Steering Committee in 2000 and served for 6 years. During this time the SC began to transition FIRST from being a club of Incident Responders to being a professional Organization with Global Influence and he is proud to have been at the start of this process. In 2001, Ian worked with Gavid Reid to setup the Best Practice Guide Library which contains security guides and templates submitted by FIRST members and for many years Ian ran a Security News mailing list that was daily sent to all FIRST members.
In 2007 Ian was co-Chair with Arjen De Landgraaf at the 19th Annual FIRST Conference in Seville, Spain. That year the conference included many new features such as Beer 'n Gear – where vendors demonstrated their equipment whilst handing out free beer, a Security Conference Blog, a Security News Podcast and a Geek Zone which included a hands-on Security Challenge. To advertise the event he even got the First Conference Logo prominently displayed on a Stealth B6 racing car at Silverstone’s GT90’s Revival race.
More recently Ian has been instrumental in forming the FIRST Cyber Threat Intelligence SIG and helping to facilitate the 2019 FIRST CTI Symposium held in London which was hosted by Digital Shadows and BT.
