Former Barclays CISO to Head WEF’s Global Center for Cybersecurity

Troels Oerting to Head the Global Centre for Cybersecurity

The 48th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Switzerland, in January announced the formation of a new Global Centre for Cybersecurity. Today it announced that Troels Oerting will be its first Head, assuming the role on April 2, 2018.

Oerting has been the group chief information security officer (CISO) at Barclays since February 2015. Before that he was head of the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) — part of Europol formed in 2013 to strengthen LEA response to cross-border cybercrime in the EU — and head of the Europol Counter Terrorist and Financial Intelligence Center (since 2012). He also held several other law enforcement positions (such as Head of the Serious Organised Crime Agency with the Danish National Police), and also chaired the EU Financial Cybercrime Coalition.

Oerting brings to WEF’s Global Center for Cybersecurity a unique combination of hands-on cybersecurity expertise as Barclay’s CISO, together with experience of and contacts within European-wide cyber intelligence organizations, and a deep knowledge of the financial crimes that will be of particular significance to WEF’s members. It is a clear statement from the WEF that the new center should be taken seriously.

“The Global Centre for Cybersecurity is the first global platform to tackle today’s cyber-risks across industries, sectors and in close collaboration with the public sector. I’m glad that we have found a proven leader in the field who is keen and capable to help us address this dark side of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

WEF’s unique position at the heart of trans-national business, with the ear of governments, provides the opportunity to develop a truly global approach to cybersecurity. Most current cybersecurity regulations and standards are based on national priorities aimed against an adversary that knows no national boundaries. The aims of the new center are to consolidate existing WEF initiatives; to establish an independent library of best practices; to work towards an appropriate and agile regulatory framework on cybersecurity; and to provide a laboratory and early-warning think tank on cybersecurity issues.

Kevin Townsend is a Senior Contributor at SecurityWeek. He has been writing about high tech issues since before the birth of Microsoft. For the last 15 years he has specialized in information security; and has had many thousands of articles published in dozens of different magazines – from The Times and the Financial Times to current and long-gone computer magazines.

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