In something of a coup for Barclays Bank, the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Center (EC3), Troels Oerting, has agreed to join the financial giant as its new group CISO.
Oerting made the announcement in a tweet on Friday, saying simply: “Strange feeling. Last day as Head of European Cybercrime Centre #EC3 at @Europol_EU - it has been a privilege! Thanks.”
The news has yet to be confirmed by Europol, although Oerting’s Twitter account has already been updated with his new role.
Former colleagues and industry experts were quick to congratulate Oerting on Twitter.
EC3 special advisor on internet security, Brian Honan, wished him well in his new role, as did McAfee EMEA CTO and another Europol special adviser, Raj Samani.
“Troels has proven to be an effective leader for Europol EC3 and has been able to bridge the communications gap between a highly technical field to business leaders, policy makers, and the general public,” Honan continued in a note to Infosecurity.
“Europol’s loss will be Barclay’s gain where no doubt Troels will continue to raise cybersecurity as a strategic business issue for the bank to deal with.”
Oerting’s 35+ year career has until now been spent in law enforcement.
In 1997 he was promoted to director of the Danish National Police’s Serious Organized Crime Agency, a position he held for over nine years before moving to head up operations at the Security Intelligence Service in his home country.
Oerting’s move to Europol came in 2007, when he joined as a police chief superintendent. Other roles followed at the transnational police force based in The Hague before he became head of the fledgling European Cybercrime Center (EC3).
EC3 officially opened its doors in January 2013 with the aim of supporting member states in cybercrime investigations.
During that first year, under the stewardship of Oerting, it made numerous arrests, dismantled global credit card fraud networks, disrupted botnets and police ransomware networks, and combated child sexual exploitation online.
Oerting’s predecessor at Barclays, Matthew Chung, left the financial giant in August last year after seven years to become CIO of technology and risk at Morgan Stanley.
In his new role at one of the world’s richest financial services companies, the former Europol man will have his work cut out given the unprecedented volume and sophistication of financially motivated cybercrime today.