Day 2 Opening - Resilience Plenary
Nicola Connelly, Jonathon Ellison OBE
CYBERUK 2026 · Day 2 · Main Plenary
This plenary session and subsequent expert panel discussion at CYBERUK centered on the critical and evolving landscape of national cyber resilience, focusing particularly on the role of regulation in accelerating cyber defense over the next decade. The session commenced with opening remarks from Beth Hopkins, COO of the NCSC, who emphasized the strategic importance of community collaboration and breaking silos to address the escalating scale and stakes of cyber threats. This was followed by a keynote from Nicola Connelly, CEO of SP Energy Networks, who highlighted the inseparable link between economic growth and robust cyber resilience, particularly within critical national infrastructure (CNI) like the energy sector.
AI review
A competent strategic/policy plenary from CYBERUK featuring genuinely senior speakers with real institutional authority — the kind of panel where the people on stage actually control the levers they're discussing. The session covers the UK CSRB, EU NIS2, Australia's SOCI Act, the Huawei removal program, and the BSI's framing of 'cyber for AI' versus 'AI for cyber.' There are occasional flashes of genuine signal — the £14.7bn GDP cost figure, the SOCI direction power framing, Ofcom's £17.5m BT fine as a case study in crisis comms — but the overall product is high-quality conference furniture…