Professional Profile

Mark is a senior technology and security executive with over 30 years of experience managing material risk within globally regulated financial services, with two decades at a global alternative investment manager as Director of IT and CISO.

A "practitioner-led" leader, Mark retains direct architectural oversight while maintaining enterprise accountability for hybrid cloud architecture and operational resilience. He has been formally designated as an FCA Material Risk Taker, a status reserved for individuals whose professional activity has a material impact on the firm's risk profile. He is trusted at the board level to ensure infrastructure and security posture withstand rigorous supervisory and investor analysis.

Core Value Proposition: The "Unicorn" Duality

Mark identifies and remediates Operational Drift-the gap where visible activity masks actual security risk-by bridging the divide between board-level strategy and engineering reality.

• FCA Material Risk Accountability: Held board-level responsibility for technology and security risk under strict supervisory analysis for globally regulated entities.

• Audit Mastery: Directed SOC 1 and SOC 2 (Type I and II) audits across 8 consecutive cycles with zero material findings.

• Regulatory Authority: Deep expertise in delivering defensible governance models aligned to FCA SYSC, ICARA, DORA, NIST, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 frameworks.

• Infrastructure Strategy: Governed a hybrid global estate spanning AWS multi-region VPC deployments and physical data centres, managing approximately USD 50,000 in monthly cloud expenditure with strict cost discipline.

• Incident Leadership: Directed executive response during high-risk events, improving enterprise detection and response times by 50% through telemetry integration and MSSP restructuring.

• Emerging Tech Governance: Leading board-level ownership of Enterprise AI deployment, including the design of acceptable use policies, data handling controls, and ethical usage protocols.

Key Assignments & Expertise

• Interim / Fractional CISO & Technology Director: Providing clinical audits of engineering governance and sustained leadership for scaling or regulated organisations.

• Audit Readiness & Remediation: Strengthening control maturity and regulatory confidence-previously reducing outstanding audit observations by 40% through structured remediation.

• Operational Resilience: Designing automated failover strategies enabling full data centre switches within recovery time objectives across multi-region environments.

• Technical Risk Management: Direct oversight of vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and the deployment of a centralised ISMS for continuous threat monitoring.

• Security Operations: Hands-on experience in hardening Windows and Linux environments and integrating threat intelligence to bolster business decision-making.

Contact & Engagement

Mark provides founder-led interim and fractional leadership through Phenomlab Ltd.

Location: United Kingdom
Website: phenomlab.com
Email: mark@phenomlab.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/phenomlab