Many thanks to all participants of the 6th Cyber Exchange 360: Talk to the Board, hosted at the Science Museum London, 6 November 2024.

Please mark up the next date for the return of Talk to the Board – Thursday 6 November 2025, London. Latest event information about 2025 event can be found at www.talktotheboard.com

2024 Recap:

A Reciprocal Exchange with CISOs, the Board and Supply Chain.
Ask questions you would ideally like to discuss with your own Board, but with no consequences.

Created and hosted by Pulse Conferences, the 6th Cyber ​​Exchange 360: Talk to the Board Conference was hosted at the Science Museum London, 6 November 2024.

A rare opportunity to question a Board – but with no consequences! Participants spoke frankly and tested questions that they would ideally like to ask of their own Board. The aim: to increase readiness to respond capacity and communication response during a crisis. In the morning, attendees learned from successful examples of corporate awareness and transformation campaigns presented by fellow CISOs. We then heard about the biggest learnings from Board Directors as they shared success and war stories on business areas including employee well-being. Participants gained context through Board perspectives on where cybersecurity sits and were deprived to future business predictions shared. It was the ideal opportunity to engage with the Board in a way that made them understand the CISO pain points as we compared key metrics and tested them on this willing panel of Board Directors. 

This unprecedented event aims to revolutionize the way large enterprises approach cybersecurity.

Why this event? Breaking Barriers…

This event is not your ordinary infosec conference. It fosters a reciprocal dialogue between esteemed Enterprise Board Directors and forward-thinking CISOs and information security practitioners. Together, participants – Sponsors, Speakers, Delegates alike – advanced the conversation and explore innovative strategies to tackle the evolving cyber landscape.

Elevating Cybersecurity

Our programme provided a refreshing non-security perspectives on cybersecurity – and rare opportunity to talk frankly and test questions that participants would ideally like to ask their own Board, with invited Directors spanning the various functional board roles that make up a board, CEO, CMO , HR, CTO…

Questions raised

• Changing nature of the consumer
• Changing risk landscape
• Corporate responsibility
• Crisis management
• Data management and privacy issues
• Digital Transformation
• Ethical frameworks for the way we manage and audit data, innovation and technology
• Fake news and social media
• Fintech
• Future workplace people and skills
• Global supply chains
• Insurance
• Leadership
• Long-term planning
• Marketing
• Modernizing tradition – a journey of cultural and technological change
• Rapid Growth
• Scaling businesses
• Supply chain
• Sustainability and decarbonisation for businesses
• Technology commercialization
• Role of ‘purpose’ in business

Our Panel of Directors 2024 included:

• Lorraine Heggessey, Former Controller, BBC 1
• Haydn Brooks, Co-Founder & CEO, Risk Ledger
• Roger Flynn, Chairman, Cooke Optics Former CEO and leader in transformation change , Virgin, British Airways, Prudential
• Rupert Lee-Browne, Chairman and Group CEO, Caxton

As a CISO why attend

• Increase readiness to respond capacity – how can we better communicate during a crisis
• Learn from successful examples of corporate awareness and transformation campaigns
• Hear the learnings from Directors as they share success and war stories
• Gain context! Board perspectives on where cybersecurity sits and useful predictions
• Speak to the Board in a way that makes them understand your pain points
• Compare key metrics and test them on the Board
• Re-energise your approach to driving change and leading teams

As a Board Director why attend

“The session Talk to the Board was a rich discussion with two interesting themes emerging for myself. The primary ask from the Board is for them to champion the importance of Cyber security and employee Cyber vigilance across the organisation as a cultural norm. To secure this commitment the audience noted the value of having a standing agenda item on the Board annual agenda. The panel also encouraged the audience to craft carefully any presentation to the Board to focus on what outcome they were asking for and to avoid just an information update. Both the audience and panel found the event very interesting and informative.” Jeremy Schwartz, Former CEO, The Body Shop, Pandora and Conival plc, Current Chairman Sustainability and Inclusion Practice, Kantar; Advisor Business, Transformation, McKinsey

“The Talk to the Board session provided a wonderful opportunity for CISOs to hear first-hand how and where they might tailor their Board interaction more strategically to achieve greater impact at this level. By doing so, board members could be better served as CISOs educate and update them about evolving organizational cyber security risk exposures and vulnerabilities. More intriguing, perhaps, was that CISO’s were urged to also see risks as potential opportunities that, with careful due diligence, might be thoughtfully exploited.”
Graham Joscelyne, Former Auditor General, World Bank and Chair: Audit and Ethics Committee, The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Current Advisory Committee for Internal Oversight, United Nations (UNRWA)

“The afternoon discussion with the Board focused on a number of key themes, how to build trust with Board members, what priorities a Board cares most about and how to sustain the conversation as a rolling programme. Such diverse Board representation from Audit, Tech, Sustainability, Risk, Marketing, People and Change meant the participants could fully engage in debate across a range of challenging topics”
Deborah Exell, Former Board Member, Head of Human Capital & Business Transformation, Getronics