Pete Watson

Spear’s Review

Cybersecurity firm X Cyber prides itself on knowing the practical geography of the internet ‘better than anyone else’. According to the company, the team have decades of work in intelligence under their belts, affording them a ‘deep understanding of how targets behave’ and ‘where, why and how they are fallible’. Only with this knowledge, it says, can you get ahead of targets and ensure meaningful impact. 

Pete Watson is the group’s director and co-founder. Prior to establishing X Cyber, he spent 30 years advising UK and foreign government entities on cyber challenges, as well as helping to shape the technologies in use by those governments. He now does the same for private clients.

Adviser Profile

Pete Watson is a Director and co-founder of X Cyber Group (XCyber®), who solve problems with state-grade intelligence expertise, across the core themes of digital trust, safety and security.

With 30 years advising UK and foreign government entities on cyber challenges, Pete’s lifelong passion for computer and data science has shaped the innovative technologies in use by those governments. He has continued to develop new data technologies and services within XCyber® in support of their clients’ needs.

Pete has exceptional insights into the core technologies that comprise the backbone of the internet and uses his computer and data science skills – honed inside the UK intelligence agencies he worked in – to provide breadth and depth to the research and innovation that spawns XCyber®’s operational capabilities.

Pete fervently believes that data will only ever be information in isolation and that it must be transformed into intelligence to allow meaningful actions to be taken on the insights it can provide. He and the team he works with provide XCyber®’s analysts with points of scientific certainty that illustrate human digital activity, distilled from the same technical complexities of the internet on which he is expert. These facts then enable the acute insights that clients seek – in turn enabling sound decision-making across all clients’ requirements.

Although a pure technologist at heart, Pete has also created solutions to a wide variety of digital challenges for both personal and corporate security and privacy that permanently surround ‘the human’ use of the internet, its applications and its platforms. Tackling the most complex digital demands on the internet requires human behavioural sciences to be understood, and it is by applying behavioural models to vast, complex data that the issues surrounding trust, safety and security can be surmounted.