My name is Steve Gailey
I’m an Information Security professional with a specialisation in security monitoring or SIEM and with an interest in leveraging Machine Learning to enhance security in the enterprise.
I got involved with security quite by accident. My first brush with Information security was in 1989 when the company I worked for was told that the drivers disks we supplied with one of our graphics cards had a virus on it. My initial thought at the time was that this was rubbish but I and my team looked at the disk (a 5 1/4 inch disk) and discovered something calling itself the Brain virus installed on the boot sector. We disassembled the virus to understand how it worked and discovered that it was broken; whilst it could replicate itself it couldn’t actually trigger (wiping the hard disk).
My second stimulus for considering myself a security person was when I wrote a small portable network analyser which leveraged packet drivers to read data from the network of a computer. I developed this at home in my own lab and when I took it into the office I was horrified to realise that I could see everyone’s passwords as they used ftp and telnet.
Since then I have worked as a security manager, mainly for large investment banks, developing security solutions and building operational and engineering teams. Most notably I was the head of Security Services for Barclays where my claim to fame was that I built what may have been the largest SIEM in the world (at the time).
More recently I moved back to the provider side of the equation and worked firstly for Splunk running their Financial Services team and the European Security practice, and then for Exabeam, where, until recently, I ran the Solutions Architecture team.
If you’d like to contact me, please use LinkedIn – I’m always happy to talk with and help fellow security professionals.
I’m very proud to have won the Service Leaver of the year award 2021 for my work since leaving the British Army. Leaving the forces was undoubtadly the hardest thing I have ever done and for some time I struggled with my mental well being. Winning this award, for me, marks the end of a long journey and serves to remind me that others are still on that journey and deserve both our respect and support as they create a post military life.
I am delighted and humble to have also been announced as a UK CSO 30 Awards 2022 winner.