Our team includes experts in digital identity, biometrics, cyber security, digital forensics and identity and document fraud.
Alastair is an expert advisor on digital identity with a background in business, political and security risk, working on UK and international initiatives across the humanitarian, development, public and private sector and a co-founder of Ingenium Biometric Laboratories. Alastair’s work has recently focused on digital identity, biometrics, identity fraud and cybersecurity. He advises clients across industry including banking, insurance, asset management, and private equity; UK Government, United Nations and World Bank; US federal agencies including the US Treasury, the United States Digital Service, Department for Homeland Security; the Australian Government and European Commission eID activities.
Alastair is presently an expert digital identity advisor to the UK Government. He is a senior adviser to the UK’s Minister responsible for digital identity, the Director responsible for digital identity, the Home Office, Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, and the NHS’s digital identity service. His roles include being responsible for developing the identity standards for the UK Government, and the UK Government’s trust framework for digital identity, which has included working with a broad section of UK and international financial services companies, institutions, and regulators. He has led the work with HM Treasury, JMLSG and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that has reflected digital identity best practice in global and national financial services guidance and legislation. His recent work has also included designing the national digital identity fraud prevention model leading work with civilian, law enforcement and security partners to understand and mitigate the business and technical risks and threats to the identity services.
Alastair sits on a number of identity expert groups at International Organisation for Standardisation, Open Identity Foundation, Digital Identity and Authentication Council of Canada, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the FIDO Alliance, and Open Identity Exchange. He is also presently a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on digital identity.
Julian is an expert advisor on cyber security, person identification and standardisation and a co-founder of Ingenium Biometric Laboratories. He has been a certified information assurance expert working in the public protection arena within the UK public sector and related EU and global initiatives including identification, policing, border control, international police cooperation (including INTERPOL), and combating money laundering for 20 years, providing support and advice to programmes, Governments and other organisations in relation to digital services, cyber security and public protection.
Julian worked with the European Commission drafting the eIDAS Regulation on the use of cross border identification to enable EU residents to easily access and use the services being operated in another member state, was the editor for drafting the implementing acts that support it and was a member of the European Union eID/KYC expert group and eIDAS Cooperation Network. He is also supporting HM Treasury, JMLSG and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) work in reflecting digital identity in global and national financial services guidance and legislation.
Julian has been advising the United States Digital Service (White House Administration), 18F (General Services Administration) and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) on their digital identity services. He has also been working with international partners in ISO, the EU and the UN on international standards relating identity including the eIDAS regulation, ISO/IEC 29115 & 29003, FIDO, NIST 800-63, UNCITRAL and IETF VoT.
Julian sits on the OASIS Cyber Threat Intelligence Technical Committee to define open threat intelligence standards, the British Standards Institute (BSi) working group in identity, security and privacy, Biometrics Institute, OpenID Foundation on eKYC & IDA, the Open Identity Exchange and is working with the UK Government, national bodies and experts on defining test methodologies and assessment process standards for biometric identification systems. He is also presently a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on digital identity.
Chris has a PhD in Electronics, specialising in biometrics, and extensive experience in academia, industry and government where he has worked on a range of projects and programmes related to identity technologies. Chris led the Identity team at CESG and the National Cyber Security Centre, the information assurance arm of GCHQ, where he worked closely with a broad range of Government partners. Current projects include working as the Biometrics Advisor to Government Digital Service, part of the Cabinet Office, which includes advising stakeholders across the public sector, as a biometrics expert for the World Bank, providing consultancy services to the ID4D programme and as a consultant to the European Commission.
Chris has authored or contributed to a number of Government standards and guidance documents in the field of digital identity and biometrics. He is the author of the NCSC Biometric Guidance, published in Jan 2019 and is the technical author for GDS guidance documents covering authenticators for online services, secure delivery of online services, transaction monitoring and business identity.
Chris is a member of a number of key industry bodies related to biometrics, including the UK Government Biometrics Working Group,the Digital Identity Group at the Biometrics Institute, and is the chair of the Cross Government Identity Standards Working Group. Chris is co-chair of the Face Verification sub-group of FIDO Alliance’s IDentity verification and binding Working Group (IDWG). Chris has also been part of the UK BSI Committee IST 33 (digital identity) and is an independent expert on the BSI IST44 Biometrics Committee and ISO SC 37 Biometrics Committee.
As a co-founder of Ingenium Biometric Laboratories, Chris leads the development of our testing proposition based on extensive experience of biometric and identity technology testing, This has included defining approaches to testing with partners such as the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, National Cyber Security Centre, the National Physical Laboratory, Cabinet Office, the National Physical Laboratory, FIDO Alliance, ISO, and MOSIP.
Professor Richard Guest is Professor in Biometric Systems and Head of School of Engineering and Digital Arts at the University of Kent. His research interests lie broadly within image processing and pattern recognition, specialising in biometric and forensic systems, particularly in the areas of image and behavioural information analysis, standardisation and usability.
He also has had significant involvement with biometric standards development as Panel Chair of the UK BSI IST/44 Working Group on Biometric Technical Interfaces and as UK Principal Expert to ISO/IEC in this area representing the UK industrial, governmental and academic interests. He is an appointed member of the UK Home Office’s Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group.
He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, acted as editor of 3 international standards and has obtained funding from UK EPSRC, ESRC, EU, charitable funds and industry. He is currently the Project Coordinator of the AMBER EU Marie Curie ITN on mobile biometrics systems, Kent Lead in PriMa ITN on Biometric Privacy and Training and Education Chair for the European Association for Biometrics. Richard is part of the Kent Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Cyber Security (KirCCS), which forms the Kent Academic Centre of Excellence in Information Assurance.
Gavin Burton served over 25 years in the Metropolitan Police and was the operational lead of the Amberhill false identity team; the only team in national law enforcement dedicated to identity crime in the UK. Gavin received training from the National Document Fraud Unit in the examination of physical and copy documents and has also worked with many of the leading suppliers of identity document validation technology.
He provides expert advice relating to counterfeit and forged identity documents, their criminal use, impact and the threats which affect the identity verification technology industry. Gavin is an advisor to the Association of Document Validation Professionals and is a certified L&D trainer with a focus on document inspection.
Lindsay Pennel has worked in software testing for over 30 years since it became a discrete specialism in software development, and was an early thought leader in the definition of testing processes and approaches, developing in particular the idea of the “W-Model” of testing to challenge the better-known “V-Model”; and also the approach of “High Value, Low Volume, Data-Driven Testing” as a manageable means of providing quality test coverage in systems. During his long career in Testing, Lindsay has worked in banking, utilities, media and central government on a wide variety of hardware and software platforms, leading teams in functional, technical, integration and non-functional testing. He has worked on several occasions in the European Commission, participating in design and testing working groups, representing his company and the UK to establish standards and working practices. He has managed testing projects at a global and pan-European scale as well as smaller high-value standalone programmes, creating a reputation for delivering. Throughout this he has been a standard-bearer for the conduct of testing in accordance with (first) BS7925 and ISO9000, then IEEE829 and now ISO29119.
In 2012, Lindsay was elected to Fellowship of the British Computer Society, in recognition of his extensive experience and expertise in delivering testing solutions for many high value projects and programmes, including UK critical national infrastructure for the Home Office (Law Enforcement). Latterly, Lindsay has been providing consultancy and guidance on testing projects with IBL, as well as participating in test execution.
Eddie Alleyn is an advisor to Ingenium Biometrics Laboratories, helping early stage British tech companies to grow and scale.
He spent 35 years working for the UK Government, in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence. He was Chair and CEO at HMGCC from 2011-2016, leading engineering teams designing and deploying secure systems of various kinds.
Over the last six years Eddie has built a portfolio of Executive and Advisory roles with a number of innovative British tech and cyber security start-ups and scale-ups, with a particular focus on the early stage ecosystem in Oxfordshire, where he lives. He is Chair of General System, on the Board at iProov, and a co-founder of Quince, a specialist insider risk consultancy. He is a Fellow of the IET.
Naomi is a senior consultant advising Ingenium clients in the assessment, design, and performance of biometric and identity systems. Prior to Ingenium, Naomi graduated with distinction from the London School of Economics (LSE) with a Master’s in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation where her research focussed on fraud risks and implications for the commoditization of digital identities. She previously worked in the US on digital innovation projects in the advertising space where she led data and measurement initiatives to enhance digital product strategy and ultimately create value for clients and partners.
