Sarah-Jill Lennard

Sarah-Jill Lennard

Sarah-Jill’s background is 30 years in the Foreign Office, and seven years as Security Partner at Deloitte UK and Switzerland. Sarah-Jill worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where she had postings to Montevideo, Brussels, Budapest and Washington. Her later career there focussed on operational technology and data. For her final three years in the Public Sector Sarah-Jill was CEO and Accounting Officer of Her Majesty’s Government Communications Centre (HMGCC) 2008-2011, shaking up the provision of technology to sensitive parts of government so that it was delivered to time, cost and quality. Sarah-Jill then transitioned successfully to the private sector and was the Security Partner at Deloitte UK from 2012 to 2018, combining the roles of CSO and CISO, with additional responsibility internally for Crisis Management, Confidentiality and Privacy. Answering directly to the Executive, she ran a tight, holistic programme to deliver an uplift in the firm’s security posture across all the domains of security in two years, and subsequently designed and ran the firm’s GDPR readiness programme from 2016 to 2018. Sarah-Jill now works as a Non-Executive Director, Adviser and Consultant, focussing on cyber security, privacy and incident and crisis management. She specialises in demystifying cyber for Directors and the C suite, helping them to focus on what matters to their business. She is also a mentor and coach.