Ari Alibhai
Barrister, QEB Hollis Whiteman
Ari specialises in private prosecution in criminal intellectual property infringement.
Ari is instructed in the first UK prosecution of an IPTV (lnternet protocol television) provider, whose operators allegedly defrauded UK and international broadcasters. He acts for corporate clients in music, film, sport and broadcast media, including the Football Association Premier League, Sky and Satellite Information Services.
He advises on designing and implementing private prosecution systems to reduce exposure to intellectual property theft. Ari chairs chambers’ private prosecution working group, having conducted more than 50 such cases and trained investigators at the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), British Recorded Music Industry and numerous trading standards services. He prosecuted successfully for FACT in R v Sohail Rafiq, Reece Baker, Graham Reid and Ben Cooper, a multi-million-pound fraud conspiracy using film ‘release groups’, the first such prosecution outside the US.
Michael Barley
Director of Group Security, Sky
Michael Barley is the Director for Group Security at Sky since 2001.
In his time at Sky he has built the security function into what it is today. He has developed the activities that protect Sky’s content, from leading investigations and successfully bringing prosecutions as well as introducing technical measure that disrupt the activities of those who seek to steal content. He is also responsible for introducing a comprehensive programme that mitigates against the risk of kidnap and death of those who travel to high risk environments. Sadly, Sky has experienced both of these events in recent years, and Michael has led the investigations. He is responsible for all fraud prevention and investigation matters; government and law enforcement liaison; anti bribery and corruption; cyber, asset protection and physical security of the estates across the group.
Prior to this Michael worked at New Scotland yard for 25 years as a detective specializing in the use of intelligence and in particular, the management of informants. He introduced a new system for the handling of informants and gave expert evidence at several high-profile criminal trials. He was seconded to the United Nations in 1996/7 and went to Iraq on several occasions as a weapons Inspector as part of the United Nations Special Commission.
He is a Liveryman of the City of London and is due to become Master of the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals in 2019. He is married with three children and enjoys playing golf.
Eric Benetiere
VP Sales & Marketing, ContentArmor
Eric is VP Marketing & Sales and leads product marketing and business development activities.
He started his career with Philips Set Top Boxes in 1996 as software developer and gradually evolved towards program management functions.
He moved to NXP Software in 2004 where he was in charge of multimedia products lines (video player, video editor, etc.) for mobile phones.
He joined Technicolor in 2006 where he held different functions in engineering, product marketing and business development positions for video products and solutions (set-top boxes, IPTV/OTT back-ends).
Eric is graduated from Telecom Bretagne (1995) and holds a master of science in image processing.
Lucas Catranis
Director Piracy & Cybercrime Management, Irdeto
Lucas Catranis is the Director for Piracy and Cybercrime Management at Irdeto. Lucas is responsible for the technical and strategic design of internal and external managed services at Irdeto as well assisting in the global investigative and intelligence activities regarding digital piracy threats to Irdeto’s customers.
From 2003 to 2013, Lucas was the Chief Technical Officer at Babtel, a secure communications provider supporting multiple Department of Defense and State Department Agencies, and security contractors during Operation Iraq Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Lucas has previously worked at Apple, Inc. and served as a System Architect for Skyway Partners where he was responsible for the design and construction of Conditional Access Systems and triple-play MDU/MTU Networks.
Lucas went to The Pennsylvania State University for his Bachelor of Arts and earned multiple academic awards as well as membership to The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Lucas currently holds technical certifications from Cisco Systems, Apple, Inc. CWNP, ITIL, AWS, Digium and SafeNet.
Mathew Gilliat-Smith
Chief Executive Officer, Fortium Technologies
Mathew is the chief executive officer of Fortium Technologies. He has 25 years experience of working in the media industry. He cofounded Fortium in 1999 and has been responsible for establishing it as a respected provider of anti piracy software solutions to blue chip film and entertainment businesses. He works closely with studio anti piracy teams to develop customised solutions that secure disc and file based content during production and after release.
Before joining Fortium Mathew held senior management positions in leading publishing, print, logistics and new media companies including Haymarket Publishing and St Ives. He led two VC backed MBOs before forming Fortium. With his management team he has specialised in taking compelling new concepts to launch and building critical market share. He was responsible for the sale of Fortium ICA in 1998, its image analysis subsidiary, which is now owned by Symantec Corporation. Having built up Patronus as a brand for protecting Academy award screeners he is currently focussing on a range of file based security publishing solutions that protect content while enhancing accessibility.
Phil Herbert
Director, Convergent Risk
Phil joined Convergent Risks as In-House Counsel earlier this year after spending 27 years as a lawyer in private practice in London where he was a partner in the Media & Entertainment department . Originally from a litigation background he specialised in Intellectual Property and Content protection where he was heavily involved in anti-piracy campaigns across the creative industries as well as advising on preventative security strategies to enable rights owners and content & data holders to minimise their areas of external business risk.
Stephanie Iyayi
Director, Convergent Risk Group
Stephanie comes from a legal background specialising in privacy and data protection. She advises clients on all areas of UK and EU data protection law, from general privacy compliance to risk management issues, including the incoming General Data Protection Regulation. Stephanie has experience of working on global projects, including data breach incidents, cross-border data transfers, employee monitoring, subject access requests and other technology, media and telecommunications matters. Stephanie also has experience in wider commercial law matters, including on technology, e-commerce and services agreements.
Brian Paxton
Head of Security & Video Consulting, Cartesian
Brian is Head of Security & Video Consulting in Cartesian’s London office and leads our Security Consulting practice in the UK. He joined Cartesian in 2016 having worked in the UK TV industry for 20 years.
Prior to joining the company, Brian was most recently Technical Director of Connected TV at Digital UK. Whilst at Digital
UK he led the technology development of the Freeview Play TV service which launched in October 2015. Freeview Play brings
catchup services such as iPlayer, ITVHub and All4 to Smart TVs and STBs.
Brian was previously Director of TV Technology for TalkTalk responsible for the design, development and operational support
of the TalkTalk TV service. This service launched in September 2012 and reached 1 million TV customers within 18 months.
The technology was designed and built to meet the needs of today’s content owners, which ensured that TalkTalk could carry
the best content from the UK and Hollywood.
Earlier projects included the development of the BAFTA and Emmy award winning “Homechoice” TV service. This innovative
TV service offered live broadcast, on-demand, catchup and start again services from 2004.
Brian holds a BSc (Hons) degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh.