Simon Edwards, Cyber Security Solutions Architect at Trend Micro

Simon started working in the IT industry in the late 1980’s and started to be involved in the new IT Security industry in the early 90’s; at that time working in the channel. His first vendor role was with Internet Security Systems, which grew from 4-5 in the UK to over 150 in 4 years. From ISS he did a short time working in the US working with TopLayer in a Business Development role; and then returned to the UK to work for other vendors such as Netscreen, Juniper, GuardedNet (an early SIEM) and others. During this time, he focused on the Intrusion Detection & Prevention market and early SIEMs.

Following the financial crash of 2008, when many US start-ups pulled out of EMEA, he took the bold step of changing roles from pre-sales to Security Architect; and contracted for the next 7 years. Mainly working for HM Government, for the likes of HMRC, MoD and the Cabinet Office he worked on some of the largest and most complex security solutions used in government at the time.

He returned to the vendor game to help launch Nitro Security in EMEA, returning to contracting when they were subsequently bought by Intel Security. One of the last contracts was with NATO, working in their SOC in Mons, Belgium. This allowed him to see the day to day operations of a Secure Operations Centre, and since then he has been focused on how security products can be best operationalised – and how customers can get the most use out of products in their own environment.

He used this when joining Damballa in 2013, where he started in a pre-sales role, but later moved to being the European Technical Manager overseeing both pre and post sales for the company as well as being one of the main spokesman running a regular ‘Hack Hive’ market and security update for customer’s and prospects. This culminated in him being interviewed by Sky News in late 2015.

Simon is a CISSP and has carried both UK SC and NATO security clearances.