First Monday of July. Half-year. The customer-portfolio operational picture has been more demanding than the year-start planning envisaged, primarily because of the sustained Russia-Ukraine geopolitical environment and the consequent customer-organisation operational tempo on cyber-resilience work. The EmilyAI commercial position has held against the ongoing geopolitical-uncertainty-affected customer-organisation procurement environment. The team has, on the survey and operational measures, sustained the heightened tempo without the kind of burnout signals I have been watching for since the December 2021 Log4Shell response.
The customer portfolio. Six vCISO clients carrying through. Browne Jacobson's programme has been on the post-Log4Shell-and-post-supply-chain-audit cycle through Q1 with a substantial broadening of the supply-chain discipline through Q2. Towry's trading-platform programme has continued in steady state with the Russia-Ukraine-driven contingency planning incorporated. Northcott's programme has been more demanding because the firm's overseas operations include several jurisdictions where the Russia-Ukraine context creates direct operational concerns, and the customer-organisation board engagement has been correspondingly higher. The manufacturer's substantial estate has continued the post-Log4Shell SBOM build-out, and the customer-organisation programme is investing in supply-chain discipline at substantial scale. The financial-services firm has continued in steady state. The retailer's e-commerce and customer-engagement platform has been the subject of substantial post-Twilio-and-post-Lapsus-pattern work on phishing-resistant MFA and on the broader vendor-trust posture.
The SOC business. Fourteen customers, no churn through H1, three additional prospects in late-stage commercial discussion for Q3 close. The SOC-side revenue is at 102% of H1 plan.
The EmilyAI commercial business. Fifteen customers entering the year, sixteen at mid-year (one churn through procurement-cost-reduction by a smaller customer, two new customers added in Q2). The post-Black-Hat momentum from 2021 has continued through H1; the customer-acquisition cadence is on plan. The product-roadmap progress has been steady — the adversarial-robustness work has shipped the v3.1 release in May, the federated-learning research direction has produced two preprint submissions to academic venues with results expected later in the year. The aggregate product revenue is at 96% of H1 plan, slightly below trajectory but within acceptable range.
The team. Thirty-six at the start of the year, thirty-eight at mid-year (two hires in Q1, one hire in Q2, one departure in May for a senior engineer who took a position at a UK technology company in a related but non-competitive area). The team-side measures have held — engagement is steady, retention is at the historical baseline, the post-Log4Shell-response recovery has been completed without lasting impact. The London office is now at approximately 60% capacity utilisation on a hybrid-by-default posture; the Bath office is at approximately 75% capacity. The COVID-period fully-remote model has been substantially replaced by a hybrid arrangement that the team-survey instruments report as the preferred working pattern.
The financial position. Cash position is healthy. H1 revenue is at approximately 99% of plan, with the EmilyAI side slightly below trajectory and the services side slightly above. The H2 plan is conservative against the geopolitical-uncertainty-affected customer-organisation procurement environment.
The strategic conversations. The supply-chain book that I have been drafting through Q1 and Q2 is in late draft and is on track for autumn publication. The 2022 conference cycle has been Black Hat USA in August (the team has a smaller presence than 2021's paper-presenting form, focused on customer-prospect networking rather than research presentation), Infosec Europe in June (returned to in-person form, with the booth presence and the customer-prospect cadence both above the 2021 virtual-form figures), and BSides Manchester in October. The institutional-capital question that I declined in October 2019 has been revisited through Q2 in informal conversations with a small number of relevant institutional investors; my disposition continues to be against raising, the company's bootstrapped position remains appropriate to the current trajectory, and I expect to continue the conversation periodically without committing.
The personal note. Half-year writing volume is twenty-three posts, on track for a 45+ year-total, which would be the highest count since 2016. The book progress is satisfactory. The team's performance has, again, exceeded what I would have expected.
Onward to H2. The post-Twilio MFA migration work continues. The Russia-Ukraine geopolitical environment will continue to shape the operational tempo. The product-roadmap execution continues. The supply-chain book lands. The work continues.