Speakers
Francis Gorman
Tim D Williams
Agenda
18:00 - Start of in-person event at BCS HQ
19:00 - Online event start and introductions
19:10 - Speaker - Francis Gorman
19:30 - Speaker - Tim D Williams
19:50 - Extended panel discussion including previous event speakers with in-person and online Q&A
20:30 - Online event close
21:00 - In-person event close
Synopsis
The Summer of PQC series closes where it started, with the question of what an organisation should actually do next. Over nine evenings the series has brought together speakers from seven countries to build the case for acting now: the governance and economic case, the legal and financial case, the technical case, enterprise transformation, operational technology, the cryptography itself, posture management and governance.
The final evening asks what it takes to convert all of that into work that ships. Francis Gorman brings the practitioner's view of the gap between policy and practice. Drawing on enterprise security architecture in financial services, and on more than sixty conversations with cryptographers, CISOs, regulators and intelligence community veterans recorded for The Entropy Podcast, he examines why well-written post-quantum policy so often stalls on contact with delivery, and what distinguishes the organisations that get past that point.
Tim D. Williams closes the series with Accounting for Cryptography: how an organisation comes to recognise, measure and report cryptography as something belonging in its financial statements as well as its risk register. This is the argument deliberately reserved when the series named quantum vulnerability as an impairment trigger on 21 July, and it completes the four-part arc that began with the economics of waiting.
An extended panel discussion including speakers from earlier in the series follows with audience questions and answers from the floor and online, before the series closes.
This final event is hybrid, hosted from BCS headquarters in London from 18:00 to 21:00 and streamed online from 19:00 to 20:30.
About the speakers
Francis Gorman is Principal Security Architect at Bank of Ireland, where he leads a team responsible for the design, implementation and governance of enterprise-wide security architecture, combining strategic oversight with hands-on technical leadership across the bank's digital platforms and infrastructure. He is also the creator and host of The Entropy Podcast, which since February 2025 has brought together intelligence community veterans, cryptographers, CISOs, business leaders and frontline practitioners for candid conversations on cyber risk, quantum risk, artificial intelligence, nation-state threats, financial crime and resilience. The show has run to more than sixty episodes, is regularly placed among the top technology podcasts in Ireland and has charted in the United Kingdom, the United States and further afield. Guests have included several voices from this series.
Tim D. Williams (FBCS CITP, MCIIS, MIET, CISSP-ISSAP-ISSEP-ISSMP, CSSLP, CCSP, CGRC, ORCID 0000-0002-1788-5736) is co-founder and CTO of ProteQC PQC Advisory Limited and a consultant in the financial services sector. He has been a BCS ISSG committee for over 10 years and conceived of and organised the BCS ISSG Summer of PQC Events series. Two of his peer-reviewed research papers were presented Cyber Science 2026 at Royal Holloway (forthcoming Springer Proceedings in Complexity), extending Anderson's security economics framework to PQC and arguing that quantum vulnerability constitutes a financial impairment triggering event. He is currently preparing a PhD by Published Works portfolio.
Our events are for adults aged 16 years and over.
This meeting is conducted in accordance with the BCS Code of Conduct for Meetings.
BCS is a membership organisation. If you enjoy this event, please consider joining BCS. You’ll be very welcome. You’ll receive access to many exclusive career development tools, an introduction to a thriving professional community and also help us Make IT Good For Society. Join BCS today
If you are attending in person, please familiarise yourself with the Visitor Instructions for the BCS London Office.
Please note, if you have any accessibility needs, please let us know via groups@bcs.uk, and we’ll work with you to make suitable arrangements.
BCS privacy notice: your data will be processed by BCS in accordance with our data privacy notice.
Photography: by attending this event, you may be photographed or filmed. Please speak to a member of staff if you do not wish to be included.
For overseas delegates who wish to attend the event, please note that BCS does not issue invitation letters.
This event is brought to you by: Information Security specialist group
