Biography

Mark Cutting is a senior technology and security executive with over 30 years of experience managing material risk within globally regulated financial services. Most technology leaders provide advice; Mark provides ownership. With two decades of extensive experience (8 years as Director of IT and Chief Information Security Officer) for a global alternative investment manager, his career has been defined by the commercial consequences of technical decisions.

As a practitioner-led executive, Mark operates at the board level while retaining direct architectural oversight. He doesn't just manage "operational drift" - the dangerous gap where visible activity masks actual security risk - he remediates it.

The "Material Risk" Distinction

Mark has been formally designated as an FCA Material Risk Taker. This status is a regulatory acknowledgement of accountability, reserved for individuals whose professional activity has a material impact on a firm's risk profile. When you engage Mark Cutting as your Interim CISO or Fractional Technology Director, you are deploying a leader trusted by regulators and boards to ensure infrastructure and security withstand the most rigorous supervisory analysis.

The "Unicorn" Duality: Board Strategy & Engineering Reality

Mark bridges the divide between the C-suite and the server room. He ensures that "Security" is not a tick-box exercise, but a defensible commercial asset.

The Boardroom Asset	The Technical Practitioner
Audit Expertise: 8 consecutive cycles of SOC 1/2 audits with zero material findings.	Cloud Governance: Managing global hybrid estates (AWS/On-prem) with strict cost discipline.
Regulatory Authority: Expertise in FCA SYSC, ICARA, DORA, NIST, and ISO 27001.	Incident Leadership: Improving detection/response times by 50% through telemetry integration.
AI Governance: Leading board-level ownership of Enterprise AI deployment and ethical protocols.	Operational Resilience: Designing automated failover for full multi-region data centre switches.

Core Capabilities of Mark Cutting

• Clinical Engineering Audits: Mark steps into environments where structure is stretched or growth has outpaced oversight, reducing outstanding audit observations through structured remediation.

• Infrastructure Strategy: He governed a hybrid global estate spanning AWS multi-region VPC deployments, maintaining enterprise-grade performance while managing significant  monthly cloud expenditures.

• Defensible Governance: Mark moves organisations beyond "compliance theatre," building GRC models that protect valuation and withstand investor due diligence.

• Emerging Tech Leadership: As an expert in Enterprise AI, Mark ensures that "acceptable use" is backed by robust data handling controls and architectural discipline.

The "Senior Asset" Engagement

Mark designed Phenomlab to bypass the "consultancy bloat" found in traditional agencies. You don't pay for account managers; you pay for direct access to a Senior Asset who can stabilise your delivery and own your risk from day one.

Whether you need a clinical audit of your engineering governance or sustained Fractional IT Leadership, Mark Cutting provides a path to accountability with zero learning curve.