Paul Gillen - global leader in the fight against cyber crime
Raminta Kairyte, Paul Gillen and Professor Orla Feely
Paul Gillen (MSc 2005 Computer Science) is this year’s recipient of the prestigious UCD Alumni Award in Science. On 18 October at a ceremony in O’Reilly Hall at UCD, in the presence of UCD President, Professor Orla Feely, current UCD CS student Raminta Kairyte presented Paul with his award. These annual UCD Alumni Awards recognise excellence and achievement and acknowledge contributions to society across diverse sectors, from business and industry to healthcare, science, culture, sport and the arts.
Paul is Managing Director and Country Lead for Barclays Bank in Ireland and Chief Security officer for Barclays Bank in Europe, where he is also the global head of Cyber, Fraud and Internal Security Transformation teams at the bank, one of the world’s largest and most systemically important. Paul joined Barclays in London in 2015 from the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) in the Hague where he was EC3’s founding Head of Cybercrime Operations and Intelligence from 2012 to 2015. Paul has been working in cyber and fraud since 1996 and was the founder of what is now the Garda Cybercrime Bureau. He was co-founder of the UCD Centre for Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Investigation and founding chairperson of Europol’s European Cybercrime Training and Education Group (ECTEG) and founder and co-chair of the European Union Cybercrime Task Force (EUCTF), a group made up of all the Heads of Federal Police Cybercrime Units across the EU. Paul is one of only 400 recipients of the Scott Medal for valour by the Garda Síochána for his part in the rescue of kidnapped supermarket executive Don Tidey in 1983. He was awarded a Fellowship of the Irish Computer Society in 2021 for a lifetime contribution to cybersecurity.
Chief Superintendent Frank Glacken (retired) with Paul Gillen
Paul Gillen was joined at the event by his family and some of the people who were influential in his career: retired Chief Superintendent Frank Glacken (the first head of the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation), who asked Paul to head the Garda’s newly formed Computer Crime Unit, and Troels Oerting (former CSO and CISO of Barclays) who hired him into Europol when he was Head of European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).
Troels Oerting with Paul Gillen and Harald Lennemann
Pioneer in cybercrime investigation education
Paul was instrumental in setting up the UCD MSc in Forensic Computing and Cyber Crime Investigation. As a Detective Inspector and head of the fledgling Garda Computer Crime Unit – the forerunner of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau (GNCCB) - he approached UCD’s Professor Joe Carthy to see if UCD could help An Garda Síochána to address the need for education about this new problem of cybercrime and investigating digital evidence. UCD academics in the School of Computer Science and the Gardaí worked together on a proposal to launch an online Master’s in Forensic Computing and Cybercrime Investigation based around the practical needs of law enforcement. The Master’s that they initiated is the first of its kind worldwide. This online degree course is exclusively for international law enforcement agencies and it teaches specialist investigative techniques to law enforcement officers worldwide. Over 1,500 law enforcement officers from 70 countries have completed it to date. It was the start of a long term collaboration between An Garda Síochána and UCD and international law enforcement. The programme is designed for law enforcement, and is partially delivered by law enforcement professionals.
More information on this year’s awards (opens in a new window)https://alumni.ucd.ie/magazine/2024/celebrating-success-and-global-impact/
Published 31 October 2024