Track 2
Establishing Trust for AI Adoption – Cybersecurity and Resilience
IDC research shows that those organisations that excel at AI, also have maturity security and governance capability. As you progress on your AI adoption journey, it is crucial to establish a strong foundation of trust through robust cybersecurity measures. In this session, we will explore the concept of Zero-Trust AI and its role in safeguarding your business assets, ensuring that your AI investments are protected.
Understand how implementing effective cybersecurity strategies can help maintain business continuity and foster trust with stakeholders. But over 36% of firms lack AI security skills, while 35% worry about visibility of AI in use. We will focus on securing your AI models, data pipelines, and intellectual property to prevent costly breaches and ensure the integrity of your operations.
By prioritising cybersecurity as a foundational element of your AI strategy, you can build a resilient framework that supports your organisation’s growth and innovation while instilling confidence in your AI initiatives.
Discussion Topics
- Is there anything fundamentally different about securing AI? What’s new, or is this a continuation of existing security practices?
- What’s the best way for security leaders to insert themselves into the AI discussion? Security is often seen as a blocker to AI, so how can we avoid this perception?
- Where do you suggest organisations start in their AI Security journey?
Roundtable Discussions
- Who are the stakeholders in Securing AI? Where does Security sit in the broader AI Governance landscape?
- What risks exist in adopting AI in your organisation?
- What approaches and strategies can you adopt to lower risks of using AI in your organisation?
Duncan Brown
Group Vice President, IDC Europe
IDC
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Duncan Brown
Duncan Brown is associate vice president, European Security Practice, at IDC EMEA and leads the firm’s security research program in Europe. He specializes in providing strategic advice to his clients, informing and validating their corporate, product, and marketing plans. Brown is an expert in analyzing the security market globally, and his list of security-related clients includes enterprises, central banks, government organizations, and security product suppliers and services providers. Brown’s expertise spans the gamut of security topics including incident response, threat intelligence, and global privacy issues. He established and leads IDC’s coverage of the global impact of the GDPR, the RPEC (ePrivacy Directive update) and NIS Directive on technology companies and their customers. His analysis and opinions are widely sought by industry leaders and investors, while his comments on industry trends and developments frequently appear in the leading business and trade publications.
You can find Duncan on Twitter here.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 11:45 am
The AI Skyscraper: How High Will it Go, and How Deep are the Foundations?
We are heading towards an AI future at breakneck speed, yet we are still composing the building blocks that will be required to support long term innovation and growth. AI promises to have substantial impacts, to our economy, technology infrastructure, culture and organisational make-up, and our attitudes to risk. This keynote session will examine the opportunities created by AI, but will also outline the challenges ahead . It will centre attention on four broad areas that organisations should focus on: cloud and infrastructure; cybersecurity and resilience; the AI-enabled workplace; and a deepened reliance on AI-enabled apps and data.
Rob O’Connor
EMEA Technology Lead & CISO
Insight
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Rob O’Connor
Rob O’Connor is Insight’s EMEA CISO and is a business technology innovator focused on advancing cybersecurity across diverse industries. He leads regional security strategy, resilience planning, and risk alignment, helping organisations strengthen their security posture while enabling digital transformation. With expertise spanning cloud security, threat management, and modern security operations, Rob is known for translating complex risks into clear, actionable strategy and driving pragmatic innovation that accelerates business outcomes.
Rob Lay
Solutions Engineering Director & CTO, UKI
Cisco
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Rob Lay
Rob has over 25 years of experience in the IT Industry. He spent a decade as a technical individual contributor, starting as a network security engineer, and progressing through solutions architecture roles before stepping into technical leadership 16 years ago. For the majority of this time Rob worked in the highly dynamic field of Cyber Security.
Rob has worked across multiple vertical markets and has experience of leading consulting, managed services, and presales organisations in varying sizes of business, from small resellers, through to very large systems integrators, before joining Cisco in 2021 to lead the Cyber Security presales organisation for UK&I where he led the team through some significant product developments across the security portfolio.
Today at Cisco Rob leads the UK&I technical go to market organisation across our Enterprise, Public Sector, Commercial and Partner organisations where our teams help our customers understand the value they can derive from the broad portfolio of products Cisco delivers.
Peter Rising
Senior Partner Solution Architect
Microsoft
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Peter Rising
Peter Rising is a Senior Partner Solution Architect at Microsoft, specialising in Security, Compliance, and Identity across Microsoft’s UK partner ecosystem. In his role, Peter works closely with strategic partners to develop scalable security and AI governance solutions that help organisations adopt technologies such as Microsoft 365 Copilot in a secure, compliant, and responsible way.
With a strong focus on Zero Trust architecture, data security, and AI risk management, Peter supports partners in translating Microsoft Security capabilities – including Microsoft Purview and integrated threat protection – into real-world services that accelerate customer AI adoption while maintaining robust security and governance controls.