Debi Ashenden
Debi is Senior Research Fellow in Information Assurance in the Department of Information Systems at Cranfield University, Defence Academy of the UK. Debi is Course Director for the MSc Information Assurance for the Public Sector, supported by CSIA. Prior to taking up her current post, she was Managing Consultant for Professional Risk Services within QinetiQ’s Trusted Information Management Department. Debi joined QinetiQ’s predecessor DERA in 1997 to build their consultancy expertise in Information Assurance and to act as the “translator” between the more technically focused parts of the organisation and the new commercial clients it was hoping to attract.
Debi has a range of commercial and public sector consultancy experience and a research interest in the psychological and sociological issues of information assurance. Specialising in information assurance and risk assessment, other areas of interest include building trust for information sharing, governance processes for information assurance, threat assessment and information security awareness. She has worked extensively across the public and private sector for organisations such as the MoD, Cabinet Office, Home Office, EuroClear, Barclaycard, Reuters, and Clos Bros. In the area of privacy and consent, Debi worked on the Home Office review of PITO to investigate governance structures for information sharing across police forces in light of the recommendations made by the Bichard Enquiry.
Following this, she was commissioned by the Chief Executive of PITO to write a report on the broader issues of information sharing across the public sector. Debi has had a number of articles in information security publishes, presented at a range of conferences and co-authored a book for Butterworth Heinemann, Risk Management for Computer Security: Protecting your Network & Information Assets. Debi has an MA in Victorian Literature, an MSc in Computer Science and an MBA research focused on understating how information security managers communicated with end users and she analysed the discourse of senior managers from BP, HSBC, Reuters, Aviva and the Cabinet Office.
