Neil Smith
Security engineer, builder, tinkerer — this is the technical side
Senior Security Architecture & Governance Lead with 20+ years across regulated financial services, insurance, higher education, cloud-native and OT-adjacent critical infrastructure. The full professional story is at neilsmith.work.
This site is the other side — the experiments, the projects, the blog that has no dress code. The place where curiosity gets documented.
Started on a Toshiba MSX around age ten. By fifteen had an Amiga A600 with an Action Replay cartridge — used it to rip assembly code from memory and recompile it. By eighteen was on Slackware, compiling kernels, running IRC eggdrop bot fleets, deep in the BBS and 2600 scene. Phreaking. Text files. Curiosity that looked like mischief but was actually R&D.
Spent five years as a food microbiologist — built a database during the placement, got offered a job. The rigour of that environment never left. Then fifteen years running enterprise infrastructure at a university, then FCA-regulated financial services and insurance, then OT-adjacent critical infrastructure at ONYX Insight.
The security industry was built by the people who broke things. Understanding both sides isn't a conflict of interest — it's the whole job.
Photography with a Nikon Z8 — neilsmith.photography. 3D printing since 2015, now on a Bambu X1C. Kayaking on the canals with an inflatable Razer X1. PS5 when the lab is quiet. French Bulldog called Grogu who has his own Instagram.