Adrian Hollister

About

Practice first, then the pen

I have worked in technology for more than thirty years. Most of what I write about, I have had to fix, defend or explain to a board first.

Adrian Hollister

01 Career

The route ran from Whitehall to the field

I spent my first fifteen years with IBM, working as a consultant across UK central government. I then led cyber security and strategy at the University of Plymouth.

Since 2017 I have run IT, cyber security and data protection for Adam Smith International, and I serve as its Data Protection Officer. I lead a fully remote team, and the group's programmes run in more than forty countries, many of them fragile or affected by conflict. The security has to work there, not only in the head office.

  1. 2017 to now

    Director of IT and Cyber Security, and Data Protection Officer

    Adam Smith International

  2. Founder

    AltLibre

    An independent research practice on European and UK digital sovereignty

  3. 2014 to 2017

    Head of Cyber Security and Strategy

    University of Plymouth

  4. 1998 to 2013

    Consultant, UK central government

    IBM

02 Why sovereignty

The contracts kept raising the same question

Where data sits is the question most organisations ask. Whose law it answers to is the one that decides what happens in a crisis.

I founded AltLibre to work that question through in public: the dependence of British and European organisations on technology they do not control, their exposure to foreign law wherever the servers happen to be, and the practical routes to a better position. It is my own research practice, and its views are mine.

Read AltLibre

03 Standards

My practice rests on what auditors test

  • ISO 27001
  • Cyber Essentials Plus
  • UK GDPR
  • EU GDPR
  • NIST CSF
  • SOC 2
  • ITIL

Certificates prove a management system exists. Evidence proves it works. My job is the evidence.

04 Place

Cornwall is where the work gets done

I live near Liskeard, on the edge of Bodmin Moor, and I have worked remotely for years.

It suits the subject. A county at the end of the line depends on subsea cables, satellite ground stations and connections it does not own, which makes it a good place to think about who controls infrastructure and what happens when it fails.

05 Contact

You can write to me directly

I read everything that arrives, and I reply to anything that is not selling me something. LinkedIn works too, if you would rather start there.

LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky ORCID AltLibre