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So long and thanks for all the bits

Ian Levy, the NCSC’s departing Technical Director, discusses life, the universe, and everything.

It’s with a heavy heart that I’m announcing that I’m leaving the NCSC, GCHQ and Crown Service.

Being Technical Director of the NCSC has been the best job in the world, and truly an honour. I've spent more than two decades in GCHQ, with the last decade in this role (and its prior incarnations). I've met and worked with some of the most amazing people, including some of the brightest people on the planet, and learned an awful lot. I've got to give a special mention to everyone in the NCSC and wider GCHQ because they’re just awesome. And I've also had the pleasure of working with vendors, regulators, wider industry, academia, international partners and a bunch of others. I like to think I've done some good in this role, and I know I couldn’t have accomplished half as much without them.

Regardless, there’s a lot left to do. So, I thought I’d leave by sharing ten things I've learned and one idea for the future. This post is long and a bit self-indulgent, but it’s my leaving blog, so suck it up 😊













[1]Yes, there are some real challenges in bringing safety and security culture together which we need to tackle, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn in the meantime.

[2]Companies worth more than a billion pounds that normally corner a significant portion of a key market, rather than the weird horsey things with pokey bits on their heads.

[3]Usually. There are some instances of companies producing de facto standards outside of any process or SDOs that only consist of governments, but the point still stands.

[4]The IETF works on a ‘broad consensus’ system and pre-pandemic, votes were decided by how loud people hummed. Seriously, this is how the internet has been evolved over the years.

Written by

Ian Levy