Peter Rutherford MBE runner up for the Excellence in STEM Achievement Alumni Award 2025

On Tuesday 4 November, 2025, the School of Science & Technology at City St George's will honour three of its most outstanding alumni at its fourth, annual STEM Alumni Awards ceremony.

This year, Peter Rutherford (MSc Distinction in Management of Information Security and Risk, 2016) is the runner-up for the Excellence in STEM Achievement Alumni Award.

In a wide-ranging interview with City St George's News, Peter shares his insights into how the field of information security and risk management has matured over the years and the importance of quality STEM teaching.

Since graduation, Peter has held several key information security roles in the UK and EU.  During his studies he was appointed Chief Business Information Security Officer for Deutsch Bank Global Markets, the investment banking arm of Deutsche Bank AG.

In March 2019, as the UK prepared for BREXIT, Peter joined Mizuho Securities Europe GmbH as Chief Information Security Officer tasked with creating the information security function for the newly created, regulated financial institution.

In December 2022, Peter moved to Amsterdam to take up the appointment as the Group Chief Information Security Officer for Infront AS, a private equity owned leading European Wealth Tech firm with more than 20 legal entities across 11 countries in the UK, European Union, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

Like many milestone events in one’s life, such as going back into education as a ‘mature’ working student, it wasn’t the result of a single factor that made me want to try, but rather a series of motivating factors that suited my circumstances at the time. From a career perspective I was convinced it could open doors for me that would otherwise have remained closed, and I did a lot of research of alternatives available at the time including similar offerings at Royal Holloway, Westminster and the OU.

At the time I had been a contract worker for more than 10 years in a number of different sectors across multiple countries and therefore was loath to sacrifice more revenue earning days than necessary. This meant that fundamantally I was only looking at part-time study options in the first place, then additional factors such as convenience of location and working weekday commitments.

Then of course there was the question on actual course content and my analysis clearly showed there were fundamentally different approaches to the topic between the different institutions.

If I was to give the list of ‘reasons’ why I applied to City St George’s they would be: a part time offering that minimised the impact on my day job in terms of time and cost;the central location in the heart of the arguably the best city in the world; the design of the course was genuinely innovative in comparison to other institutions; the opportunity to apply for a schloarship (which was ultimately successful), the excellent cross section of experiences, knowledge and job roles of the cohort that I joined; the reputation of the institution and the faculty.

Without doubt one of the biggest ‘rewards’ from my time at City St George’s was the networking connections made with my cohort and faculty during my studies, many of which I have been able to maintain even eight years after completing my studies.

Not only have I seen other members of my cohort succeed in their own business ventures in the information and cybersecurity field, but I have also been in a position to support fellow cohort members with job opportunities in the UK and the Netherlands.

The biggest challenge was balancing my studies with full time employment and home life. Whether a blessing or a curse, during my studies I was given people and process management responsibilities in large part off the back of my participation in my studies in the first place.  In turn, this made devoting time to my studies even more difficult.

Having previously had the experience of taking a year off to study for an MBA at the University of Nottingham, I did have a good idea of what postgrad standards were.  However, I under estimated the practical difficulty and effort required to balance my studies with increased work responsibilities.

My studies at City St George’s gave me what I consider to be a well rounded approach to the topic of information security and risk management for the enterprise organisation.

It helped me build on and sell myself on my strengths — I am not a technologist! — and had a direct, tangible positive impact on my career prospects and experiences during my studies and since graduation.

It directly contributed to my first senior appointment in this field at Deutsche Bank. It subsequently gave me the opportunity to escape the UK after the BREXIT and move to Frankfurt, then after three years move to my current location in Amsterdam.

I have no doubt in my mind that my studies at City St George’s gave me a differentiator in a very competitive and constantly evolving work space.

My most memorable highlights to date are being given the opportunities to create the information security function from scratch of a newly created, regulated financial entity, and being the first Chief Information Security Officer in over 25 years’ for a European wealthtech software firm.

Naturally human nature says that if one has had a good personal experience of an institution they are always going to recommend the experience to others!  It is, however, still possible to be objective.  And the reality is that while good reputations can be hard to attain and retain, they are easily lost.

My advice to anyone considering City St George’s as a place to study would be to cross reference for matching of their own circumstances and aspirations with the verifiable facts of the institution.

To highlight a few, I would say it has an outstanding graduate employment record with an impressive 92.4% of graduates in work or further study within 15 months of completing their degree. It also has outstanding metrics, on a global scale, for academic excellence and research quality.  There are excellent and exceptional opportunities for MSc students interested in research.

City St George’s strong industry connections and professional focus is in no small way multiplied by its strategic location in the heart of London and a student diversity of over 170 home countries that inevitably creates a global network.

And, from a very personal perspective, I would highlight two specific factors that I will always remember.  The first was the quality of the faculty which I found to be universally excellent, albeit intellectually challenging!  The second was student support experience which was also excellent because it recognised my circumstances as a working student with concurrent family and work commitments.

From my perspective, as a chief information security officer in a commercial context, I feel the UK faces a number of critical challenges across the STEM sectors that directly, negatively impact cybersecurity resilience.

Broadly speaking. these issues span from acute skill shortages in the market place, emerging technological threats from an AI-enhanced threat landscape, critical and key infrastructure vulnerabilities, and supply chain security challenges.

I also feel that the quality of STEM education, something that is typically regarded as a mitigating factor to the acute skills shortage issue, is itself and somewhat ironically under threat from technological advances such as AI. The advances in the capabilities of generative AI, even within the last six months, have been nothing short of phenomenal.

As someone who completed his studies less than 10 years ago, I vividly recall the effort required to complete a relatively straightforward piece of module coursework which typically would be 130-160 man hours for a paper of less than 2000 words. There are now tools that are widely available that I believe could produce the same output, and probably at a better standard, in a fraction of the time!

Traditionally I have made judgements about the suitability of candidates for certain roles based on their tertiary education results, because I knew first hand the effort required to complete a master’s course. Now I feel I can no longer make these assumptions with candidates who have gained qualifications within the last one to two years and that additional checks and interview effort is required.