CyberEdBoard Insights: Ian Thornton-Trump

Inversion6 CISO on Help Desk Gaps, IAM Failures and AI Detection Tony Morbin (@tonymorbin) • June 11, 2025

Recent attacks on retailers, including Marks & Spencer and Co-op, reveal critical gaps in identity access management and help desk functions. Ian Thornton-Trump, CISO at Inversion6, said these incidents are "a massive wake-up call to a sector of the industry that has been under-appreciated when it came to cyber risk. And so that massive wake-up call is going to come with a massive bill."

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While not all details of these breaches are confirmed, the role of help desks in these compromises underscores a critical vulnerability. "It appears that a third party was essentially the initial access point via a social engineering attack on the help desk function," he said.

Thornton-Trump advises organizations to adopt one-time administrative access policies, restrict lateral movement within networks and ...