Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a global initiative that takes place every October and helps to raise awareness about online safety and encourages individuals and businesses to protect themselves from cybercrime.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month helps everyone to remember that there are simple, and effective ways to keep themselves safe online.
If you are planning an event this month these are a few speakers we would recommend
Alex Wood is a Cybercrime, Social Engineering and Counter Fraud Speaker. Alex Wood’s early career was in the music industry. From the age of 13 he toured the world as a violin soloist and performed under the greatest conductors of the modern era.
At the age of 24 his career was abruptly halted by the onset of repetitive strain injury (RSI) in his right hand. Faced with mounting debts and no source of income, his criminal career began. His life spiralled out of control, culminating in several years spent in prison for dishonesty offences – everything from impersonating the 13th Duke of Marlborough to committing multi-million-pound cybercrime.
As Alex Wood listened to the victim impact statements during his final sentencing hearing, so began his redemption journey. Since his release from jail in early 2022, Alex has turned his life around and become an immensely powerful force in the Counter Fraud profession and is now one of the co-presenters on Radio 4’s Scam Secrets
Charlie McMurdie is the former Head of Scotland Yards of Economic and Cyber Crime, and a respected conference speaker on cybersecurity and online crime. As head of the Police Central eCrime Unit and National cybercrime programmes, Charlie was the UK’s top law enforcement officer in the international world of hacking, cybercrime and online fraud
She led the cybercrime and cyber terrorism response for numerous international investigations including delivering the 2012 Olympics cyber response while providing over £1.8 billion harm prevention. Since then, she has become the senior cybercrime advisor to PwC and led a range of global strategic and operational cybersecurity programmes as well as leading the cybercrime response within Breach Aid, PwC’s critical incident multidiscipline response team.
Bennett Arron is an award winning writer, and stand up comedian and speaker on Identity Theft, Fraud and GDPR and Mental Health. Several years ago, Bennett was in serious debt. He owed thousands of pounds to phone companies, banks and department stores. Only it wasn’t him. Bennett was the first major victim of Identity Theft in the UK. The crime left him penniless and homeless.
Years later, Bennett wrote, directed and presented the Channel 4 Documentary How To Steal An Identity in which he stole the identity of the Home Secretary. The Documentary was described as ‘Fascinating and Disturbing’ and was ‘Pick of The Week’ in all the major press. Bennett was subsequently shortlisted for a BAFTA – and taken in for ‘questioning’ by Scotland Yard! As a result of the programme, the Driving Licence Application Form had to be changed.
Bennett now tours the world telling his disturbingly true yet funny account of what it’s like to have your identity stolen and revealing the devastating consequences of making a documentary ‘in the public interest.
Gary Hibberd is a Cyber Security Expert and speaker, with over 40 years experience in technology, Data Protection and Cybersecurity.
Gary is the co-founder of ‘Consultants Like Us’, a Cybersecurity and Information Governance Consultancy dedicated to helping organisations improve their security. He is a practitioner in Cybersecurity and Data Protection with over 40 years in Security, and a background of working with large and small organisations to improve their technical, physical and human security.
Gary has worked in all areas as a programmer through to Ethical Hacker to Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Working within the public and private sector, helping organisations in banking, fintech, IT services, legal, retail and hospitality. For the last 15 years Gary has helped start and build Security Consultancy’s in Yorkshire.
Ian Murphy is a cybersecurity architect and speaker with over 30 years in the industry, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and Chartered IT Professional (FBCS CITP), and the founder of CyberOff — the UK’s first independent AI security architecture practice. He is also, somewhat improbably, a stand-up comedian.
A Liverpudlian born and bred, now living in Devon after a brief detour via the rest of the country, Ian’s security career began at the Ministry of Defence in the early 1990s. He navigated the dot-com bubble, spent years in vendor land and pre-sales, and eventually took the entrepreneurial path that led to CyberOff. Today he works with boards, CISOs, and risk leaders on the challenges that define AI security right now: governance frameworks, risk assessments, and threat modelling for AI systems — including the agentic AI risks that most organisations haven’t heard of yet.
If you looking for a speaker for Cybersecurity Awareness Month please do contact us on enquiries@scampspeakers.co.uk