peter bassill · operator
$ tar -xf media-kit.tar --verbose

press.

Everything a journalist, producer or event organiser needs — bios at four lengths, headshots, the topics I can speak to, and a direct line. No PR agency in the middle; you get me, and you get a same-day answer when you're on deadline.

Name · Peter Bassill (one T, two Ls) Title · CEO, UK Cyber Defence · NED In industry · since 1996 (29 years) Base · United Kingdom · en_GB
$ cat bios/* | wc -w
01 / Bios

Four lengths. Lift the one that fits.

Approved copy — use verbatim, no sign-off needed. The copy buttons do what they say.

BIO / XS · ~120 chars · captions, lower-thirds
CEO, UK Cyber Defence. CREST European Council. The advisor who has actually carried the pager. Based in the UK.
BIO / S · ~280 chars · social, short intros
Peter Bassill. CEO of UK Cyber Defence; CREST European Council; IR Pan-Europe. 29 years on the consoles and in the boardrooms. The CEO who still writes the code, the advisor who has actually carried the pager. en_GB · since 1996.
BIO / M · ~60 words · event programmes, panels
Peter Bassill is the CEO of UK Cyber Defence and sits on the CREST European Council and CREST IR Pan-Europe board. 29 years operating at the kernel and in the boardroom — the same conversation, different room. Available for advisory work where someone needs to have actually done the thing.
BIO / L · ~180 words · features, speaker pages
Peter Bassill is the CEO of UK Cyber Defence — the firm he founded as Hedgehog Security in 2009 and renamed in 2025. He sits on the CREST European Council and on CREST IR Pan Europe, both roles he was elected to by his peers, not appointed to by a vendor. He has spent 29 years in cyber security, starting on bulletin boards and consoles before the industry had a name for itself. He has run incidents, hardened estates and briefed boards across financial services, defence, healthcare and critical national infrastructure. He still writes code. He still rotates his own keys. He prefers SSH on a non-default port and a clean fail2ban configuration over any vendor's "zero-trust" brochure. He advises boards on cyber strategy and resilience, takes a small number of Non-Executive Director conversations, and coaches CISOs through their first major incident. He writes regularly at peterbassill.com, speaks more often than he'd like, and is based in the United Kingdom.
$ grep -l "can comment" topics/*
02 / Comment & topics

What I can speak to, and how I do it.

Plain language, specifics over slogans, and no vendor pitch hiding in the quote. If your deadline is today, say so in the subject line — deadline emails get answered first.

INCIDENTS & BREACHES
What actually happened, in English.
29 years of incident rooms: what the attack was, what it means for ordinary firms, and what the breached company's statement isn't saying.
AI & SECURITY
Beyond the hype and the panic.
Shadow AI, agents with credentials, deepfake fraud, and what the regulation actually requires. Author of the free AI Security Starter Kit for small firms.
SMALL BUSINESS
Security without the enterprise budget.
Cyber Essentials, what attacks on UK SMEs really look like, and the £300 myths versus the real costs. The kitchen-table version, gladly.
BOARDS & GOVERNANCE
The view from both chairs.
What boards should ask, what CISOs should answer, director liability, and cyber regulation from DORA to the CSR Bill — as someone who briefs boards weekly.
THE SHAPE OF A QUOTE FROM ME

"The interesting question isn't whether they're compromised. It's how long they've been compromised and didn't notice. Most boards still measure detection time in weeks, when the only honest unit is days."

— plain-language observation · the thing most people get wrong · the thing that would change the outcome. 30–50 words, attributable, no waffle.

$ history | grep -i "spoke\|quoted"
03 / Recent appearances

Where you may have seen me.

A short list, kept current — I'd rather give one good talk a quarter than four mediocre ones. Slides are public.

Earlier appearances, podcast episodes and print quotes — links on request. Booking a speaker: the writing at peterbassill.com/writing is an honest preview of what the room gets.

$ contact --press --deadline

On deadline? Say so.

Email is the channel. Put the outlet and the deadline in the subject line and you go to the front of the queue — same working day for deadline requests, two working days for everything else. Phone interviews, broadcast and panels all considered; remote or UK travel.

same-day for deadlines · en_GB · no PR agency · quotes attributable to "Peter Bassill, CEO, UK Cyber Defence"

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