Mike Boutwell

Giving Practical guidance to help aspiring cyber professionals start a lucrative career in cybersecurity.

➤ Serving in the capacity of a CISO to deliver key security related business strategy
➤ Presented security management reports to C-Level and auditors to address findings and close gaps. 
➤ Defined security requirements for customer systems and implemented security policies and SOPs.
➤ Developed company wide security requirements and selected third party tools aligned to needs.
➤ Led hackathons creating opportunities for software development teams to collaborate on projects. 
➤ Networked and stakeholder management to secure new business opportunities and win contracts.

Key Achievements
➤ Secured work with public and private financial service companies with 1000+ staff across UK and Europe. 
➤ Consistently achieved and maintained technology compliance rates of over 95% in diverse enterprises.
➤ Oversaw security and risk assessment for a national clearing house managing assets valued at $27 trillion.

Senior Information Security Consultant

Euroclear

➤ Overseeing critical initiatives to assure delivery is in line with risk tolerance
➤ Conducting risk assessments for critical business applications and processes
➤ Collaborating with executive stakeholders to apply risk management strategy
➤ Development and management of board level KRIs

Senior Information Security Risk Manager 

➤ Conduct risk assessments for critical financial applications and documents weaknesses for review.
➤ Design and develop security requirements based on the outcome of business impact assessments. 
➤ Work in collaboration with the CISO to build and create security requirements in line with NIST CSF.
➤ Assess third party risk in business and cloud applications and make best practice recommendations.

Key Achievements
➤ Lead for cyber risk assessments on bots and artificial intelligence
➤ Risk assessment of a critical financial application vital to capital markets processing $1Q annually.
➤ Identification of critical risks resulting in RFP to seek a new vendor to remediate open vulnerabilities.

Principal Information Security Consultant - CISO IT Risk

Takeda

➤ Digital transformation project lead in the setup of a US client’s Innovation Capability Centre in Slovakia.
➤ Defined the baseline security standards, security standard toolsets, and phased out unnecessary tools.
➤ Developed supporting SOP and policy documentation and standards and secured approval for rollout.
➤ Established endpoint protection team, a SIEM/SOAR capability, and vulnerability management program. 

Key Achievements
➤ Led global security standard for on-prem and cloud security deployments for digital transformation.
➤ Designed and implemented an executive dashboard to provide a data-driven security program.
➤ Improved executive decision making by enabling access to critical real time data and information. 
➤ Facilitated introductions for executives with Slovakian contacts helping growth from 30 to 300 staff. 
➤ Recruited and trained endpoint protection team overseeing 60,000 workstations and 120,000 servers.

Endpoint Security Team Lead

AT&T

➤	Led the security and IT strategy for the WPP Plc. account agile team, architects, and 30 engineers.
➤	Managed all client services to deliver secure architectures across EMEA, US, and APAC regions. 
➤	Worked in collaboration with the client CIO to implement technical solutions to drive cost reduction. 
➤	Technical SME conducting security analytics, control assessments, vulnerability, and risk assessments. 
➤	Mentored network team and architects to drive professional development and delivery to meet KPIs.

Key Achievements
➤	Transitioned WPP Plc. to enable a work from home setup in response to Covid from scratch.
➤	Created standardised workflows to deliver fast but consistent results for high priority projects.
➤	Appointed as Global Agile Team lead delivering a backlog of work and greatly reducing costs.

Senior Information Security Architect - Global Agile Program Lead

➤ Lead for the Citizens Financial Group account and the technology lead for the network engineers.
➤ Risk assessment and audit to identify all in scope assets and assessed existing configuration and gaps.
➤ Audited accounts to assess security posture, conducted risk assessments, and proposed improvements.
➤ Designed complex secure architectures in campus, WAN, data centres, SDN, and wireless environments.
➤ Produced documentation for RFP, RFI, and proposals, and architectural lead for projects over $100M.
➤ Developed security reference architectures aligned to business strategy and PCI-DSS requirements.

Key Achievements
➤ Achieved PCI-DSS compliance in a complex banking environment reducing enterprise IT risk by 68%.
➤ Responded to an RFP for Dow Chemicals architecting a secure solution resulting in a $100M contract. 
➤ Resolved instability issues which led to outages on 1200 ATMs and implemented enhanced logging.

Senior Network Security Architect - Lead for Citizens Financial Group

First Data Corporation

➤ Secured card and payment systems and networks in compliance with PCI-DSS on two continents.
➤ Strategic lead for disaster recovery planning, testing, and regulatory compliance for payment hubs.
➤ Compliance management including pre-testing, fault finding, resolutions, and regulator liaison. 
➤ Implementation and technical solutions for switches, routers, firewalls, VPNs, and load balancers.

Key Achievements
➤ Lead for 20 EMEA core credit card processing hubs exclusively managing London and South Africa. 
➤ Designed secure data centre and colocation architectures for multiple EMEA countries hubs.  
➤ Developed and rolled out cybersecurity policies and SOPs across EMEA to protect financial data.

Senior Network Security Engineer

T-Systems International GmbH

➤ Supervised the team and implemented security policies in a multi-vendor firewall environment.
➤ Network design SME providing input and advice on a wide range of critical business services.
➤ Deployed secure applications through engineering load balancing services for business continuity.
➤ Conducted risk assessments and made recommendations on best practice technology solutions. 

Key Achievements
➤ Project managed the deployment of the first 4G network in Europe for T-Systems International.
➤ Migration of a large-scale payment service to a greenfield ultra-low latency environment.
➤ Implemented network-based services for EverythingEverywhere’s search oriented architecture suite.

Network Security Engineer

Two words sum up my mission in information security: trust and expertise. With 15 years of security and 10 years of risk management experience under my belt, I've been fortunate enough to work with leading organizations like Cisco, AT&T, IBM, Kyndryl, First Data, and Euroclear.

My portfolio:

→ I help financial services firms secure their business and improve performance metrics with ISO 27001
→ Assessing AI risks in large complex environments and providing solutions to use AI in a risk-aware manner
→ I train teams and organizations on ISO 27001 implementation and auditing. 
→ Speaks to more than 30,000 people annually
→ Coaches and helps young professionals start and enhance their cybersecurity careers

My results:

→ Secured assets worth over $1 quadrillion
→ Delivered projects worth over $100M
→ Recently completed a major project with a world-renown vendor addressing cloud security risks
→ Consistently achieved security compliance rates of over 95% in diverse enterprises
→ Advised on the development of an innovative CNAPP security solution with a major vendor
→ Author of the Ransomware Handbook and Profit-Driven Cybersecurity

→ Contact: https://www.mikeboutwell.com/contact
→ X: @mikeboutwell4

Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)

I lead the national coordination of cyber crisis management, incident response and operational cyber defence at BSI. This includes strategic alignment across federal and state actors, critical infrastructure protection, and public-private resilience planning. 

My role involves close collaboration with executive-level stakeholders, supporting Germany’s ability to respond to hybrid threats and strengthening the country’s digital resilience architecture.

Director General – Operational Cyber Security

Financial Market Infrastructure

Led the transformation of risk and resilience governance, including IT and cyber risk oversight. Key contributor to crisis management, 3LoD integration and regulatory readiness across multiple European jurisdictions.

Head of Group Risk Management

Member of the group wide council focusing on Diversity, Inclusion, LGTQ+, etc.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Council Member

IÉSEG School of Management

Professor

Financial Services Sector

Held various senior positions in risk management, operational resilience and compliance transformation. Built global frameworks and supported digitalisation programs in regulated environments.

Senior Risk and Security Roles

Various clients

Advised clients on risk governance, strategic security initiatives and transformation projects.

Consulting Roles

State of Bavaria

Law Enforcement & Criminal Investigations

I serve as Director General for Operational Cyber Security at Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), where I lead national efforts in cyber crisis management, incident response and resilience across federal and state levels.

With over 20 years of experience in risk, security and executive leadership across the public and private sector, I believe in connecting strategy with execution and values with results.

My background includes financial infrastructures, international regulation, insurance, law enforcement and crisis coordination. From corporate strategy to national preparedness, I have learned that strong teams, clear responsibility and mutual trust are essential in complex environments.

I believe in public service with purpose. I am committed to building security that is not only technical, but strategic, resilient and future-ready.

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Mike Boutwell

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