We’re bringing together experts in digital and cyber security from the public, private and academic sectors to help Greater Manchester’s digital security startups to innovate and grow.
Introducing DiSH
Manchester City Council has selected a consortium led by Barclays Eagle Labs to operate the new Greater Manchester Digital Security Hub (DiSH). DiSH offers growing digital security businesses and the wider Greater Manchester community with access to business support, mentoring, dedicated growth programmes, training, and career opportunities through a consortium of Barclays Eagle Labs, Plexal, Lancaster University and The University of Manchester.
Mentoring
DiSH can provide one-to-one coaching and mentoring from start-up and industry experts. We provide our members with a range of coaching and mentoring opportunities, including access to the experience and expertise of Barclays Chief Security Office with our handpicked mentors who can assist in a range of areas from Cryptography, Cybercrime, Physical Security and Digital Security tools and processes.
Karen Jordan
Director of Global
Cryptography
Karen Jordan has worked for Barclays for 34 years and is the Director of Global Cryptography and BUK BISO, within the Chief Security Office for Barclays. Karen is responsible for ensuring Barclays operates its Cryptography in a compliant manner across the firm, and where it is not working those business units to migrate to a compliant solution or have a plan to migrate.
Abbey Taylor
Senior Cybercrime
Manager
Having specialised in Cybercrime over the last 12 years, Abbey leads Barclays Cybercrime Intelligence team, supporting stakeholders across the bank to understand fraud typologies targeting personal and business customers. Since joining Barclays in 2021, Abbey has also taken up the challenge of supporting the creation of an Economic Crime Fusion Cell, which brings together over 25 teams across the bank to respond swiftly to emerging fraud threats.
Adam Kramer
Head of Joint
Operations Centre
Adam leads the Barclays Joint Operations Centre, which is a multi-function operational fusion centre based in multiple global locations, and provide 24x7 monitoring and response to a broad range of threats including cyber & physical security, buildings/premises, economic crime and more, all of which is supported by a suite of teams providing expert guidance and intelligence feeds.
Paul McCabe
Team Lead for Barclays International Application Security & Penetration Testing
Paul McCabe has worked for Barclays for 20 years and is the Barclays International Team Lead for Application Security & Penetration Testing, within the Chief Security Office. Prior to this Paul worked for IBM. Paul is responsible for ensuring Barclays International Payment and High-Value systems comply with Regulatory and internal Cyber Security Standards helping to maintain the systems Cyber Security posture.
Philip Ashworth
Security Consultant
Chief Security Office
Philip has worked in Cyber Security for 14 years with a primary focus being network security/architecture and the implementation of technology controls to provide defence in depth.
In his current role with Barclays as a Security Consultant he provides security governance and guidance to internal projects.
Dharmesh Kavia
Head of Third Party
Security Due Diligence
Dharmesh has worked in the Information Technology industry for over 15 years, and focused on cyber security for 10 of these years. Dharmesh has a vast experience in cyber security domains, which include managing and developing security operations centres, conducting security audits, providing security consulting and third party security risk management.
Dharmesh joined the Barclays Chief Security Office in 2018 working within the Third Party Security Assurance and Monitoring team after spending a number of years consulting in government and private sector roles.
Sarthak Bansal
Cyber Operations, Data Loss
Prevention, Barclays
Sarthak works in Barclays Chief Security Office and has experience in Insider Threat Investigation, Data Leakage Prevention and in BX CISO. As a part of his roles, he is responsible for investigating any incidents of Data Leakage across the bank and handling request based risk analysis and exception management of various tools and technologies. Prior to his role he pursued a GCHQ certified MSc degree in cyber security from University of Warwick and gained wide exposure to various security domains including security consulting, risk management, digital forensics, cyber intelligence, and cryptosystems.
Mladen Marev
Head of Security Engineering
in Digital Platforms, Barclays
Mladen has worked at Barclays over 9 years, he worked in the security department in cryptography and certificate management and security architect. 5 years ago, He joined the Barclays Mobile Banking application team, responsible for cyber vulnerabilities management. Recently, his responsibilities have grown across the Digital Platform, helping the applications to be secure and robust in regard of threat attacks, detection and exploit the holes and misuse (intentional or not) of the interfaces. He is familiar with many aspects of vulnerability detection tools and approaches, Such as pen testing, SAST, DAST, SCA, etc. and with secure software development. Additionally, he has have knowledge and experience in key management, public key infrastructure, crypto.
Vivek Nighot
Technical Lead
Insider Threats
Vivek has over 11 years IT experience working in numerous technical areas such as DevOps, SIEM, SOAR. He has been working in Cyber Security domain for the last 6 years and has developed deep understanding of various security frameworks and best practices, to effectively address threats and vulnerabilities. He is the technical lead for the Insider Threat Fusion Centre where he built technical platform to detect and target insider threats for the bank. He is currently building the next generation solution for detecting and mitigating insider threat activities. He is passionate about pushing boundaries of SIEM(Security Incident and Event Management) technology to enhance threat detection, Incident response and overall security posture for organizations. Key areas he can provide mentorship and advice are SIEM, Security data analytics, Data Engineering, Security logging and Monitoring , Emerging Insider threat detection.
Meet the DiSH team
Darren O'Brien
Ecosystem Manager,
Barclays
Darren's been working with Eagle Labs for the last 5 years, responsible for the Greater Manchester ecosystem. He has extensive experience supporting start ups and scale ups to collaborate and grow.
Siobhan Gurrie
Hub Manager,
Barclays
Siobhan has worked for Barclays since 2011, starting as a cashier before moving into a personal banking role, helping customers with their product and servicing needs. She has a passion for meeting new people and learning new things.
Patrick Byrne
Hub Manager,
Barclays
Paddy has been with Eagle Labs for the past 3 years, supporting start-up businesses and helping them grow.
David Bleakman
Barclays
David is the Digital Security & Cyber Industry Lead for Barclays Eagle Labs, creating programmes and connections to support corporates and start-ups across the industry.
James Darwent
Barclays
James is a dedicated and customer focused individual striving to create a welcoming and collaborative environment within the Eagle Labs community.
Jon Lomas
Lancaster University
Jon leads Lancaster University’s Secure Digitalisation programme and wider activities at DiSH. Jon is also actively supporting the development of skills and education provision across Greater Manchester and creating links between the academic, corporate and business communities.
Danny Dresner
University of Manchester
Danny is the University of Manchester's Professor of Cyber Security. He finds the threads that bind information together and mend them when they break. He has a noted track record in projects supporting SMEs' cyber security, and works to bridge the divide between people and technology.
Chris Lowerson
Lancaster University
Chris works supporting a range of companies with cyber innovation helping them too embrace and exploit digital technology to enhance and grow their business securely. Chris also manages events, workshops and access to wider university provision.
Stuart Nelson
Plexal
Stuart is an Innovation Associate at Plexal, and is supporting DiSH cohort members. Through the DiSH Accelerator, he will be helping startups and SMEs grow and play an active role in the cyber ecosystem. Stuart has an academic background with four years of cyber security education having studied Cyber Security at the University of Derby and the University of York.
Stuart Coulson
University of Manchester
Stuart Coulson is a Cyber Security expert with over 20 years of experience in the industry. He currently works as the Cyber Ecosystem Project Manager for the DiSH Accelerator project at the University of Manchester, supporting the growth of cyber startups and entrepreneurs in the Manchester region. Stuart is also the founder of his own consultancy, HiddenText, where he focuses on Security Awareness and Business issues. Stuart often appears on panels, podcasts, and webinars to share his experiences and opinions, and his successful blog at HiddenText was a finalist in the Cisco IT Blog Awards.
Get in touch
Whether you’re starting out in digital security and cyber or looking to expand, we’re here to help. If you’d like to find out more about our DiSH programme and upcoming events, we’d love to hear from you.
Partners
Barclays Eagle Labs
Eagle Labs are a growing national network of incubator spaces that provide business incubation, mentoring and co-working space for ambitious high-growth businesses.
By cultivating a community of likeminded entrepreneurs through a providing a collaborative work environment, access to their peers and opportunities to maximise growth through digital connections, curated events and funding opportunities, Eagle Labs are able to help start-ups to grow at pace.
Plexal
Plexal is the innovation company that supercharges collaboration.
It combines open innovation with a community of fast-growth startups to help enterprises and the government unlock the potential of technology.
As the dedicated innovation partner for DiSH, Plexal will deliver digital security innovation programmes, helping to catalyse the growth of SMEs across Greater Manchester and beyond through the integration of its sector-specific innovation expertise and its national and international networks.
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a member of the prestigious Russell Group and one of the UK’s largest single-site universities. UoM have over 40,000 students, 12,000 staff and with almost 480,000 former students from more than 190 countries, we are home to the largest alumni community of any campus-based university in the UK. No fewer than 25 Nobel laureates have either worked or studied here.
Lancaster University
As lead academic partner, Lancaster University brings world-class research and teaching into the partnership. Research intensive and ranked in the top-ten of all UK league tables, it has been the highest ranked University in the North West for more than a decade and holds a Gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework.One of the UK’s leading Universities for cyber security research, innovation and skills development, Lancaster was among the first cohort of UK universities to gain recognition for its commitment to cyber security education, being recognised by the NCSC as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education.