This year’s Mervyn David award went to Darren Carter, presented at the final quarterly meeting of the UK chapter of the US-based association of security managers ASIS International.
Russell Penny, a former chair of ASIS UK, is pictured left making the presentation to Darren. Earlier that day Russell attended the meeting of the Association of Security Consultants (ASC), at the British Library at St Pancras, then crossed London to ASIS UK’s venue at x + why at Clapham Junction. At the ASC, the David Clark awards were presented by the Security Commonwealth, in the name of a security industry stalwart and chair of ASIS UK, who died of cancer at the age of 49 in 2019. Russell recalled to the ASIS UK gathering that Darren came in as vice-chairman to deal with a number of significant challenges after Dave’s death. Darren stepped in as interim chair in June, after Letitia Emeana stepped down. “Darren has done a fantastic job for us,” Russell said.
On board
As a result of the annual elections, Darren and Letitia have stepped down from the board. The new chair is Stephen Ackroyd; and vice-chair is Farah Benis. Also on board are Eren Bessim (one of the many speakers to ASIS UK in 2025) in charge of digital content; and Steve Kenny.
Speakers
The winter meeting of ASIS UK had a sporting feel; the first speaker was the broadcaster Tom Gaymor, who related how a high-speed crash at the age of 21 that broke his back ended his career as a racing driver. He, and Oliver Laurence, a Londoner then a policeman in the Australian Outback who spoke with the former England cricketer now insurance broker Simon Jones, explored personal resilience, in particular how elite athletes must recover from injury – and find a life outside of the sport that they had chosen. In between them, the researcher Rachel Briggs, CEO of The Clarity Factory, described her findings from surveying and speaking to chief security officers (CSOs) about convergence, in a word – that is, the coming together of physical and cyber security. While the idea has been around for perhaps 20 years, not that many corporates carry it through – perhaps because CSOs and their cyber counterparts chief information security officers (CISOs) wonder who will be in charge of who and have whose budget. Rachel set out how CSOs and CISOs could – without using the word convergence, or any abbreviations, acronyms or jargon – go about working together, and indeed with other functions such as HR, on common matters such as insider risk and to counter fraud. See also www.clarityfactory.com/Annual-survey for Rachel’s annual survey of CSOs.
About ASIS
As Darren recalled to the meeting when starting proceedings, besides a bumper-attended summer seminar at Chelsea FC, the chapter went outside of London, by holding a meeting at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, in the autumn. Visit www.asis.org.uk.
