Heather Lowrie

As of February 2025, Heather Lowrie was an independent advisor and a member of ISMG's CyberEdBoard, having previously served as Chief Information Security Officer of the University of Manchester, a post in which she was the institution's first appointee.

Career path

Before moving into government work, Lowrie held technical and IT leadership roles in the financial services industry.

In early 2020 she joined the Scottish Government, working as Lead Security Architect for National Records of Scotland before moving into the roles of Head of Security, Risk & Resilience (Interim) and then Head of Cyber Security, Risk and Resilience.

In that post she led the team responsible for protecting Scotland's national archival, statistical and civil registration information, and she provided cyber security assurance, oversight and operational management for Scotland's first digital-first Census in 2022.

Lowrie joined the University of Manchester in May 2023 as its first Chief Information Security Officer, leading the strategic transformation of information security and identity and access management services across the University.

In November 2023 she took part in a panel discussion at the Research Lifecycle Programme Showcase on developing a Secure Research Environment for the University's researchers.

Recognition and later work

Lowrie has more than 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, technology, risk and resilience leadership roles across global industries, spanning engineering work through to board-level leadership.

She was named CISO of the Year 2024 at the SC Awards Europe and is recognized as a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec).

She also founded Resilionix, a startup focused on helping organizations build resilience in a complex digital environment.

As of February 2025 she was described as an independent advisor and former CISO of the University of Manchester, and she continued to hold cybersecurity industry certifications including CISSP, CISM and CDPSE.

Public remarks

Discussing crisis leadership during her CyberEdBoard interview, Lowrie said: "Even when the situation around you is changing constantly and you might not have perfect information, you're still able to act in a calm, decisive manner and bring people along with you as part of that."

She also addressed cybersecurity as a challenge extending to economies, infrastructure and individuals, and spoke about strengthening national resilience through public-private partnerships.