Designing Systems not Silos - Why the Future of Cybersecurity Depends on Horizontal Thinkers

Cybersecurity is often framed as a technical challenge, and professionalisation efforts tend to follow suit—focusing on skills, standards, and certifications rooted in engineering, coding, and compliance.

But as threats grow more complex and more entangled with social, legal, and organisational dynamics, this framing not sufficient on its own. The future of cybersecurity will depend not just on sharpening technical expertise, but on recognising and integrating the roles of communicators, policy-makers, behavioural scientists, organisational designers, and ethical navigators.

These are not "soft" add-ons—they are system-critical actors in the design of resilient organisations. This is a call to expand the map of what it means to be a cybersecurity professional—and who gets to belong.

About the Speaker

Ben Hanson

Ben creates clarity for the most critically-important organisations on the planet. As a Senior Security Strategist and Advisor at Microsoft, he partners with the CISOs and other security leaders at the world's largest Financial Services institutions, guiding them through the complex interplay between business and security objectives, risk, technology, and cultural transformation.