Five Minutes With: A Senior Technical Specialist at Coventry Building Society

Meet Guy Heaton. When he’s not dousing on the lipstick as pantomime Dame or running up muddy tracks (quite the contradiction), he’s backing up the data at Coventry Building Society

Tell me about your job

I manage backup and recovery in the infrastructure portfolio and ensure that only the right people can access our data. The cyber resilience team has now realised they need more than backups to manage data adequately.

What career path would you take if you were to start all over again?

If I had my time again, I’d restore old cars. If I win the lottery, I’m off to be a drummer in a heavy metal band. Or a professional pantomime Dame.

What was your route into cybersecurity?

I studied IT at Manchester Met University and fell into it like everyone else. I had an aptitude for problem-solving, and the money was decent, so here I am. I enjoy it, but it’s not my passion.

What would you consider the biggest game changer from your 30 years in the industry?

Virtual machines and cloud computing. Multiple SaaS providers mean you rely on various people to keep your data safe, bringing risk in the supply chain.

What’s the most damaging consequence of a data breach on a bank?

It’s the downtime being out of service. Two to three years ago, we had three days of downtime due to an internal technical issue wiping our ability to sell services and mortgages. It focussed senior leadership minds on how important IT security is, which was both good and bad. We were given more resources and money to create secondary copies of back ups, but we also came under more fire.

Is AI having more of a positive or negative impact on cybersecurity?

AI is not truly intelligent yet. We haven’t got into it that much, but we’re going to put in an AI voice recognition system, which will be our first use of large-scale AI.

What’s the best thing about your job?

Autonomy – I get listened to. I’m the subject matter expert for Commvault, for example.

And the worst?

Also autonomy. Because everyone trusts that you’ve got everything sorted, I can’t do it all by myself. People rely on my backups as protection and think they don’t have to worry about ransomware. They do.

What advice would you give to industry n00bies?

Be broader in your learning. Don’t become a Windows person, or a Linux person – be broad.

When you choose vendor partnerships, what’s the most important consideration?

Cost matters, but the breadth of capability matters more. You don’t want to be managing multiple vendors – look for one pane of glass. I like a one-stop shop.

What’s your one (as yet) unfulfilled career ambition?

I’d like to be more integrated with the overall cyber resilience strategy and team. And that is finally happening.

Tell us a guilty secret?

I like to indulge in am-dram and have been a pantomime Dame.