Discussing Cyber Security with the Detective Superintendent at the NPCC

The Public Sector Cyber Security Conference 2026 took place on Thursday 05 February at the QEII Centre in London and welcomed senior cyber, digital, security, risk and public service leaders from across government and wider national sectors to the QEII Centre in Westminster, London, for what proved to be our largest and most impactful event to date.

“The event is always one of the most informative and useful conferences of the year. It has interesting speakers covering topics that are an issue today as well as topics that will be an issue to be addressed in the future.” – Crown Prosecution Service

With an outstanding 472 attendees, 29 speakers and 20 sponsors, the breadth of participation and depth of discussion set a new benchmark for the event, driving meaningful engagement and high-level strategic dialogue at a critical time for public sector cyber security.

We sat down with some of those speakers, discussing cyber security and the conference. In this article, we highlight that discussion with the brilliant Andrew Gould, the Detective Chief Superintendent at the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

You can watch the interview here.

We’ve got other interviews in the works, so keep an eye out at Government Events!

What has stood out to you about the conference today?

It’s been a great event. It’s really well attended. People are really interested to hear what the speakers have got to say. There are a lot of people that are passionate about the subject and also quite worried about the things that they need to help their organisations prepare. So I think it’s a great event, bringing some real kind of knowledgeable experts together to help people better understand the threats and how they can tackle them. It’s been really good so far and nice biscuits too!

Why do you think a cyber security event is important?

I think an event like this is really important because it helps people understand some of the threats that we face and what they need to do in practical terms to address them. It can be really quite scary thinking about all these cyber risks and threats.

But getting a number of practical steps and tips from people who are experts in their field to help people get their organisations to better protect themselves and help them come up with the right plans and the advice around how to deliver it is really valuable and important.

If you could give the audience one message to walk away with, what would it be?

The one piece of information I think would be kind of understand what you think your biggest risks are.
So think about who might want to attack you, what they might want to take or the damage they might want to do. Because if you understand your risk and then understand the impact of how that might play out, then you can start to come up with an effective plan of how to prevent it or how to recover from it if the worst does happen.

We’d like to thank Andrew Gould for his attendance at the Public Sector Cyber Security Conference 2026 and for taking the time to join us for an interview. It’s through industry leaders like Andrew that we can learn how to develop a more resilient and effective cyber security defence.

You can now register your interest for the Public Sector Cyber Security Conference 2027 here.



Government Events plans to use the momentum from The Public Sector Cyber Security Conference 2026 to host the Government Technology & AI Summit 2026 this July. Across the day, you’ll hear from senior leaders shaping the UK’s AI and data strategies, take part in focused seminars on topics such as ethical AI, local government digitalisation, and data sharing, and gain practical insights from real-world implementation.