Executive Team

Mike led the M&A team in the acquisition of the BAE Systems’ MSSP business. As Chief Executive Officer, Mike brings to Talion more than 30 years of experience as a global executive. He has a demonstrated track record of value creation through experience and operational excellence. Mike is recognised for his success in helping companies–in high-growth technology and Software-as-a-Service–scale globally and innovatively. His leadership and experience were developed working with large global technology leaders such as IBM, Oracle, and Siebel, and also with small, high-growth security companies including Solidcore, Algosec, and Siemplify.

At Talion, Mike challenges all team members to push past the status quo and discover innovative security services and solutions for today’s complex cyber threat landscape.

Keven Knight led the opportunity to divest the commercial cyber security division from BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. As Chief Operations Officer, Keven oversees the Talion product portfolio, client services, and operational delivery. Prior to Talion, Keven played a pivotal role with BAE Systems for seven years where he managed and grew the Enterprise Managed Security Service business and positioned it as a leader in the MSSP market. Keven comes from a strong Service Delivery background, developed and enhanced through blue chip organisations such as IBM, ICI, and AT&T. With a history of designing and implementing global delivery models and projects, Keven leverages his wealth of experience to ensure a modern, agile, and collaborative approach to the customers that Talion serves.

Richard Haycocks is a highly experienced Corporate Finance practitioner. He was a Partner for 12 years in a ‘big four’ accounting firm and 4 years as Partner in a leading 2nd tier accounting firm; in both roles he was responsible for building the Corporate Finance and M&A practice. Richard has advised on M&A, Project Finance (including PPP and PFI), management buy outs, financings and restructurings in a broad range of sectors both domestically and internationally. He has also been European Finance Director for a top performing Fortune 500 company. Recently Richard has been advisor to a multi-billion pound international Investment Group on a number of deals in Property, Renewable and Green Technologies, and managed the Group’s Infrastructure and PFI/PPP investment portfolio. Richard is a Chartered Accountant, holds a Diploma in Corporate Finance and is a Fellow of the Securities Institute.

Madeline Carr is Professor of Global Politics and Cybersecurity at University College London and the Director of the RISCS Institute for Research into the Science of Cybersecurity. She is also the Director of the Digital Technologies Policy Lab which supports policy making to adapt to the pace of change in society’s integration of digital technologies. Her research looks at the ways in which emerging technologies both enable and pose challenges for global security, order and governance. Professor Carr has published on cyber norms, Internet Freedom, multi-stakeholder Internet governance, the future of insurance in the IoT, the politicisation of CSIRTs, and the public/private partnership in national cybersecurity strategies. Her book US Power and the Internet in International Relations is published with Palgrave MacMillan. Professor Carr was Co-lead on the Standards, Governance and Policy stream of the UK’s £24M PETRAS research hub on the cybersecurity of the Internet of Things and plays a leadership role in the new PETRAS National Centre of Excellence. Professor Carr runs a number of funded research projects including one on the Geopolitics of IIoT Standards, an EPSRC funded (£480K) project looking at the ways in which cybersecurity policy makers evaluate evidence, an NCSC/LRF funded (£1M) ‘Supporting the Board in Cyber Risk Decision Making’ project, and an EPSRC (£280K) project looking at international cooperation on critical infrastructure in the IoT.

Gareth Norman is the Operations Director. He is responsible for the day-to-day technical service delivery and back-office functions. He is part of the founding team of Talion, joining from BAE Systems Applied Intelligence where he honed his skills in operations and built the teams responsible for the first-line security triage within the Security Operations Centre. Gareth’s background is in enterprise-scale service operations and managed service delivery. He has previously worked at EE and global IT managed services within T-Systems where he was responsible for the operational delivery of one of the world’s largest cloud-hosted Exchange environments. Gareth and his global team deliver the highest level of operational service quality, at the heart of everything they do are good process, strong inter-team delivery, and a commitment to excellent customer experience.

Liam Salsi is the Architecture Director at Talion and leads Talion’s architecture function governing the design and engineering of secure security services.

Liam is part of the founding team of Talion, joining from BAE Systems Applied Intelligence where he led the Architect and Onboarding consultancy team for the Enterprise Managed Security Service’s Security Operations Centre (SOC).

Within BAE Systems Liam has led design and build of security products and services, including Commercial and Nation State SOCs and provided Security Architecture and Design consultancy to both commercial and military customers. Prior to BAE Systems, Liam was the Design and Technical Authority for a range of secure military capabilities in his tenure with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services (and formerly Electronic Data Systems).

Phil Phillips is the Talion Client Services Director and is responsible for our customer-facing services. He joins Talion after 6 years at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence where he led the Enterprise Managed Security Delivery function and brings across over 20 years’ experience of managing complex customer engagements. During his career he has been responsible for the transformation of a number of outsourced IT services and is expert at implementing long-lasting improvement programs having worked with customers such as Oracle, ING Barings, G4S and Highways England. At Talion, he is accountable for ensuring the high quality and value of the services we deliver and, through the management of the Service Delivery and Program Management functions, is responsible for assuring that our customers’ needs are met to the standards that they expect.