Colin Whittaker
Head of Security, APACS

Colin Whittaker is the Head of Security for APACS http://www.apacs.org.uk/. APACS was set up in 1985 as a non-statutory Association of major banks and building societies and has become the UK Payments Industry Trade Association. APACS provides the forum for banks and building societies to discuss non-competitive issues relating to money transmission. His role is to provide the focus for information security issues within APACS and to provide direct support to APACS members.

Amongst the many issues he is currently addressing the rise in attacks against the customers of e-banking services, and the development of a co-operative and collective industry response. In this task he has contributed by building a strong relationship with UK law enforcement agencies, and other partners around the world. He is actively involved with a range of technical information security issues including PKI and personal identity, as it relates to the payments industry and as new delivery channels are developed between financial institutions and their customers. In this work is closely involved in reviewing the many consultative papers emerging from the UK government on the move to personal identity, E Government and its relationship with the future Digital Citizen.

Prior to assuming this position in 2001 he served as an officer in the British Army where he carried out a wide variety of appointments dealing with Information Security. These culminated in being responsible for the provision of Information Security advice to all Ministry of Defence IT based projects, as well as directing major information security research programmes, as well as being a liaison officer to the US Defense Department in Washington DC for information security initiatives.