Michael Lawrie is a former head of Commercial Security at British Telecom dealing with a range of customers and sectors including Government, Police, Education, the NHS, Banking, Insurance, Telecoms, Retail & Manufacture and also some of the smaller to medium enterprise customers. He was one of the first to build and manage BT’s Internet Services and prior to that had created and managed his own Internet companies. He is considered to be one of the earliest pioneers of British Internet and was the first person to offer free public access to anyone who wanted it as early as 1992.

Before working for BT, Michael had already spent over ten years in computer, financial and network security, in large scale risk-assessment and also in computer-misuse investigations and forensics; working on some large scale worldwide hacking cases and pioneering a number of network forensics techniques. As an executive member of the Professional Bodyguard Association, he is also a specialist in threat-assessment, counter-surveillance and some of the more esoteric aspects of real-world security.

These days Michael trains in and writes about Risk-Analysis, Commercial Security, Policy and Law; conducts risk surveys, reviews security policies and systems designs, and occasionally writes about and teaches things that aren’t security related at all. He also keeps his hand in with modern systems by running a small Internet Services Provider which supports a few select clients and offers a lot of free applications services and management for good causes. He is also slowly rewriting a book that he wrote under NDA a few years ago and is working on another book about castles.

Michael has also been involved in some high profile battles with large companies over trademark law, including a two year case against British Airports Authority over an internet site for sheep.

He heads up user-safety at OkCupid these days, and is ethically and morally comfortable with what they do there. This is unusual as far as his career goes!

CV’s and Resumes:

• Linkedin.

Fairly Random Quick Links:

• The Art of Security.
• A Risk Training course for Middlesex University.
• Hicom – One of the Earliest British Internet Systems.
• Ancientcomputers.com – Michael’s computer museum.