Chris Gibson

FIRST.Org - Executive Director

Chris Gibson

Chris brings a wealth of relevant and up-to-date experience in setting up and managing CERTs at the very highest levels of the worldwide Information and Cyber Security community. His involvement in the community started over 25 years ago - he is recognized as an internationally respected expert on cyber incident response and has been instrumental in building global collaboration networks to facilitate rapid information exchange during cybersecurity incidents.

Chris spent over 12 years working in the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) whilst at Citigroup and, for 10 years, was part of the leadership of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST); 2 as Chair.

Within FIRST he implemented the Fellowship program. This was created to fund CERTs from UN-designated “Least Developed Countries” (LDCs) allowing them both to join FIRST and attend conferences and training.

Chris joined the UK's Cabinet Office, in 2013, to build, launch and lead the UK’s first formally chartered national CERT - CERT-UK.

Chris joined FIRST as it’s Executive Director in May 2019. Since joining FIRST, Chris has been dedicated to further building trust and strengthening real-time cooperation across the global cybersecurity community.