Talking 5 with Local Public Services Member TrendMicro

Each month, techUK's Associate Director for Local Public Services, Georgina Maratheftis, interviews a member active in the local government space about their vision for the future of local public services and where digital can make a real difference to people and society. This month we talk with Jonathan Lee, Director of Public Sector Relations, about digitalisation which needs to be underpinned by a resilient cybersecurity strategy.

Welcome Jonathan. Firstly, tell me more about you, your career and how you got to this position today?

As a student I worked supporting disadvantaged children for Mansfield District Council in the holiday periods and, during term-time, as a volunteer tutor in a Birmingham secondary school, helping children whose native language wasn’t English to prepare for their GCSEs. These were formative experiences as I was able to witness first-hand the ability of education and local public services to transform the lives of children and communities.

After leaving university I wanted to build on that experience and combine my interest in public services and my passion for communication into a career which could assist the public sector to digitally transform in a secure way, at a time in which the internet was starting to reveal its true potential.

Some twenty-seven years after entering the then fledgling world of cyber security I now lead Trend Micro’s public sector relations.

I passionately believe that having a focussed team of public sector specialists, knowledgeable and passionate about keeping citizens, students and patients safe from today’s increasingly complex cyber threats is imperative. Our team understands the issues impacting the public sector, speaks their language and is able to articulate how the Trend Vision One platform can reduce the risk for their organisation.

What is the greatest opportunity for local government the public sector when it comes to digital?

Local government budgets are one of the areas of public services where real-terms spending remains lower in real-terms in 2024/25 than it was in 2010/11, which has placed pressure on the quality and accessibility of local authority services. Since 2018 eight local authorities have issued section 114 notices, compared with just two in the previous thirty years. This pressure on budgets is not just impacting local authorities though, but all of the public sector.

So, how could digitalisation help to address this shortfall in spending power? The obvious answer is AI, regularly referred to as the current industrial revolution. AI and data analytics can help the public sector to become more efficient in terms of productivity, by enabling it to improve the delivery of some services at a lower cost.

As well as increasing productivity, AI and machine learning are being used by cybersecurity defenders such as Trend Micro to keep ahead of the threat actors and to make tools more useable, as customers face a real skills gap. Tools such as our Companion AI assistant empower customers to comprehend complex threats more easily and to make better-informed decisions, addressing that skills shortage, and increasing overall cybersecurity operational effectiveness.

What is your vision for the future of local public services and places?

As public services are gradually transformed through digitalisation and the use of AI and data analytics, the citizen experience should improve and efficiencies should be realised.

At the same time though, this increased digitalisation needs to be underpinned by a resilient cybersecurity strategy, which enables public sector bodies to maintain the trust of their service users, who can then be confident that the data and information they share will be kept safe and secure.

The data they hold and the services which a cyber-attack could disrupt mean they are very attractive targets for a threat-actors and so it’s imperative that their assessment of management of cyber risk is pro-active. Looking at such risks should become a dynamic and continuous process, with IT security staff having the visibility they need across their estate, the ability to prioritise tasks and mitigation becoming easy to achieve.

My vision and that of Trend Micro for the future is one where the sometimes tick-box nature of cyber security compliance is replaced by ongoing risk assessment and mitigation enabling the public services of tomorrow to be resilient and available at all times for the UK’s citizens.

Local Public Services Programme activities

Our Local Public Services Programme helps techUK members to navigate local government. We champion innovation that can create truly digital local public services helping to create thriving, productive and safer places for all. Visit the programme page here