Tag Archives: resilience

The Missing Layer in the West Midlands Tech Narrative: Cyber as Industrial Resilience Infrastructure

The West Midlands is increasingly positioning itself as a technologically advanced industrial economy shaped by AI, digitisation and interconnected operational systems. However, much of the regional technology narrative still underestimates the importance of cyber resilience as a foundational element of economic infrastructure. As manufacturing, logistics and supply chains become more digitally dependent, cyber resilience is rapidly becoming inseparable from industrial continuity, competitiveness and long-term regional economic capability. Welcome to my review of TechWM’s “West Midlands Tech Review 2026 (WMTR26)”

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Psyber Inc: The Best Bits So Far

A short overview of some of the strongest articles currently on Psyber Inc, exploring cyberpsychology, organisational resilience, recoverability, human factors, and post-breach adaptation. The article also connects Psyber Inc’s operational cyber resilience work to broader themes explored on Horkan.com around systems thinking, digital environments, online harm, cognition, and cybernetic approaches to behaviour and recovery.

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Super-Productive WM Cyber Day: Reflections from the Tech Transformation Summit, Innovation Fest and the SWBH NHS Charity Quiz Night

A reflection on a uniquely busy West Midlands cyber and technology day spanning the Tech Transformation Summit, BCU Innovation Fest and the SWBH NHS Charity Quiz Night. Covering cyber resilience, leadership, AI, workforce transformation, industrial resilience, and the growing regional cyber ecosystem, the article explores how operational resilience is increasingly a human, organisational, and economic challenge rather than a purely technical one.

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Choose to Build Your Own Meaning Anyway: Beyond the Question of Usefulness

Part 7 of a seven-part series examining neurodivergence through the lens of usefulness. This article moves beyond analysis to response, arguing that when systems fail to produce belonging or meaning, the only viable path is to construct meaning deliberately. Drawing on lived experience, philosophy, and practice, it explores how to continue without resolution by building something that matters, rather than being defined solely by usefulness.

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The Curious Presence of Cyber in Local Government Strategy

Cybersecurity is no longer absent from local government strategy, but according to research from the Local Gov Strategy Forum, it remains structurally subordinate. Despite increased investment and board-level visibility, it does not shape transformation. Instead, it sits behind financial survival and service modernisation, creating a misalignment where systemic risk is acknowledged but not architecturally addressed.

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Ides of March 2026: Motivational Quotes on Betrayal, Resilience, and Overcoming Hardship

Throughout history, words have served as powerful tools for inspiration, warning, and encouragement. Whether it’s facing betrayal, enduring hardship, or rising above challenges, the right quote at the right time can provide strength and perspective. Below is a collection of timeless motivational quotes that speak to resilience, betrayal, and overcoming adversity.

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Advances in Nature‑Inspired Cyber Security and Resilience Reviewed: Ambitious But Largely Speculative

The book Advances in Nature-Inspired Cyber Security and Resilience is an ambitious but largely speculative collection of academic experiments trying to borrow concepts from biology for cybersecurity. While the underlying resilience principles (adaptivity, diversity, redundancy) are sound, the research remains mostly theoretical and poorly translated to operational use. The algorithms look good in simulation but fail in real environments with real constraints. It’s more a showcase of potential than a set of deployable solutions. Insightful, yes, but still speculative: interesting to read, not ready to run.

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Nature-Inspired Cyber Security and Resiliency Reviewed: Fundamentals, Techniques and Applications

A grounded, unromantic review of Nature-Inspired Cyber Security and Resiliency (IET, 2020). The book argues that we can borrow defence principles from biology (immune systems, swarms, self-healing) to build adaptive digital security. The idea is clever but mostly speculative. The theory works on paper; the engineering doesn’t. Nature may be elegant, but enterprise networks aren’t petri dishes. Useful metaphors, immature mechanisms: an interesting academic exercise, not an operational blueprint.

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Scale by Geoffrey West Reviewed: Where Physics Meets Hubris

Geoffrey West’s Scale seeks universal mathematical laws of growth across biology, cities, and corporations. It’s bold, partly right, and mostly over-extended. The biological physics hold up; the social analogies don’t. Useful for thinking about efficiency, fragility, and systemic limits; but best treated as heuristic, not law.

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Structuring Cyberpsychology: From Foundations to Practice

This article sets out the structure of a cyberpsychology curriculum designed to address the coherence gap identified in Cyberpsychology Today. Rather than treating cyberpsychology as a loose collection of effects, this framework organises the field from foundational theory through to applied practice. The phases that follow are not arbitrary. They reflect the minimum conceptual spine required to study how persistent, mediated digital environments shape human psychology, and how that knowledge can be responsibly translated into research, policy, and real-world intervention. What follows is not a manifesto, but an architecture for learning.

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The Work Speaks for Itself

This article explains why I am stepping back from writing about neurodiversity as a primary lens for my work. Not because the subject no longer matters, but because over time it has begun to obscure achievement rather than illuminate it. This is a reflection on explanation, authority, and the point at which context stops being helpful and starts getting in the way.

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Ontological Desynchronisation: From Birthgaps and Behavioural Sinks to Algorithmic Capture

Ontological Desynchronisation offers a compelling synthesis of demographic, behavioural, and algorithmic dynamics to explain contemporary societal fragility. Building on reproductive desynchronisation and behavioural sink theory, it introduces ontological capture as a missing mechanism linking algorithmic governance to population collapse and civic erosion. The article is strongest in showing how temporal compression undermines judgement, coordination, and intergenerational continuity. While some remedies remain aspirational, the framework is original, integrative, and strategically valuable, reframing collapse not as decline in numbers alone but as a failure of shared time, attention, and becoming.

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From Policy to Place: Aligning the UK Cyber Policy with the West Midlands Futures Growth Plan

The UK Cyber Policy 2025 and the West Midlands Futures Green Paper 2025 set bold agendas but risk gaps without practitioner-led delivery. The national policy offers ambition but lacks continuity, metrics, and practitioner voice. The regional plan lays strong scaffolding but underweights cyber, leaning too heavily on AI. A ten-point roadmap shows the way forward: formally recognise cyber as a standalone cluster, unify governance, foster community, attract investment, establish a hub, launch a festival, rebuild narrative, reform SME funding access, enhance talent strategy, and create a regional benchmarking index. Anchored in the West Midlands Cyber Hub, this approach can balance national ambition with regional delivery, making resilience a driver of inclusive growth.

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The West Midlands Futures Green Paper (2025): Synopsis, Key Takeaways, Critique, and Recommendations

The West Midlands Futures Green Paper sets a bold agenda, but risks leaning too heavily on AI. Cyber must be treated as a foundational enabler across every sector, from advanced manufacturing to healthcare, and anchored in a practitioner-led West Midlands Cyber Hub. Such a hub can drive assurance, skills conversion, supply-chain uplift, and regional equity, ensuring growth is both resilient and inclusive.

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Databricks vs Snowflake: A Critical Comparison of Modern Data Platforms

This article provides a critical, side-by-side comparison of Databricks and Snowflake, drawing on real-world experience leading enterprise data platform teams. It covers their origins, architecture, programming language support, workload fit, operational complexity, governance, AI capabilities, and ecosystem maturity. The guide helps architects and data leaders understand the philosophical and technical trade-offs, whether prioritising AI-native flexibility and open-source alignment with Databricks or streamlined governance and SQL-first simplicity with Snowflake. Practical recommendations, strategic considerations, and guidance by team persona equip readers to choose or combine these platforms to align with their data strategy and talent strengths.

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16 Years On: Was I Right About the UK’s Industry and Innovation Imbalance?

Exactly sixteen years on from my 2009 article on the UK’s economic imbalance, I reflect on how services continue to dominate GDP, while manufacturing still punches above its weight in R&D. I was right about the R&D gap, but missed the rise of intangible capital and startup-led innovation. Cybersecurity emerged as both a strategic asset and an innovation driver. Government efforts have been patchy, and real balance remains elusive. The future lies in resilience, not symmetry.

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Of Course You’re Not Resilient… You Never Practised Failing

A blunt critique of organisations that claim to be resilient but have never stress-tested their systems, rehearsed recovery under pressure, or practised failure in any meaningful way. The article challenges boardroom bravado and highlights the psychological and operational consequences of untested confidence, arguing that true resilience is earned through discomfort, not declared in policy.

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Inside the Breach: What M&S and the Harris Federation Reveal About UK Cyber Vulnerabilities

Two senior leaders, Sir Charlie Mayfield, former John Lewis chairman, and Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation, joined BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on 1 May 2025 to discuss the impact of recent cyber attacks on Marks & Spencer, the Co-op, and UK schools. Their stories offer rare insight into how institutions respond to major breaches and what it really takes to recover.

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Steering Regional Resilience: Reflections on Two Years Supporting DSIT’s Cyber Local Programme

As Chair of the West Midlands Cyber Working Group, I’ve helped lead DSIT’s Cyber Local steering group for the region over the past two years. Working alongside regional experts, I’ve supported the selection of projects that strengthen cyber resilience on the ground, including Aston University’s powerful work on cyber violence against women and girls. This experience has reinforced just how critical locally informed funding is to building practical, inclusive, and impactful cyber capability.

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Scaling Cyber: A Startup Founder’s Journey from Idea to Exit

This virtual book is a guide to the entrepreneurial journey, drawn from real-world experiences in cyber startups. It distils insights from my time on the NCSC for Startups accelerator (cohort 13, 2023), the DSIT Cyber Runway Scale programme (2024/2025), and my mentoring on DSIT’s Cyber ASAP programme. It’s a collection of lessons, reflections, and hard-earned knowledge from the founders, investors, and industry leaders I’ve met along the way. Thanks to Marcel Duchamp you can think of it as a “ready made”, a curated work built from my blog articles, assembled to help you navigate the path from startup to scale, and beyond.

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