Private client technology and security
I look after the technology, security and information around families and their businesses. A family can hold several companies, property, trusts and advisers in more than one jurisdiction while the information that describes it all lives in email, spreadsheets and one person's memory.
Engagements are contracted through Dead Simple Computing Ltd and delivered within its applicable insurance and governance controls.
The shape of the need tends to set the shape of the work. The exact scope follows from the situation.
Project
A defined piece of work with a written output. A structured review across identity, devices, email, household networks, assistants and advisers, producing a report and a prioritised remediation plan, or a continuity map of the people, entities, assets, advisers, documents and access that keep the family's affairs running.
Retained
A named senior contact with continuing responsibility for identity, devices, communications, backups and adviser access across the family and the businesses it owns. Where a board needs retained security leadership rather than household cover, that sits under a virtual CISO remit.
Transaction
Pre-acquisition assessment of a target company's technology, security and key-person position, for families, family offices and their deal advisers. It sits alongside the lawyers and the accountants in the deal team and reports into the same timetable.
Broader technical consultancy remains available for defined technical questions, often for the businesses families own. If you are dealing with an active incident, please use the separate incident route rather than the ordinary enquiry form. Written guides and self-serve tools for the same readers are collected separately.
The common factor is not a particular technology. It is affairs that have grown substantial while the arrangements holding the information behind them have not.
A family holds several companies, properties and trusts, with advisers in more than one jurisdiction, and nobody has the complete picture of how it fits together.
The information that matters lives in email, spreadsheets and one person's memory, and everyone involved knows it.
A business is being bought, and the technology, security and key-person position of the target needs testing before completion.
Something has gone wrong: an account taken over, a payment redirected, a device lost, and it needs handling quietly and properly.
Breadth does not mean an open-ended engagement. The question, the authority and the outcome are made explicit before work begins.
Separate what is known from what is assumed, understand how the family, the businesses and the advisers actually operate, and make clear who owns each decision.
Agree the scope, access, decision rights, reporting line, confidentiality requirements and which advisers are inside the circle.
Investigate, advise or lead the agreed work, record the decisions, and leave a written position that the family and its advisers can use without me.
I founded Dead Simple Computing in 2018 and remain directly involved. This site is the distinct route to engagements I scope, lead and substantially deliver myself. DSC contracts and invoices the work, and it is delivered within DSC's applicable insurance and governance controls.
Managed IT, formal certification and engagements requiring a delivery team remain DSC company services. The work described here is private client work, led by me.
Each engagement is separately scoped. Fees reflect direct senior involvement, the complexity of the work and the discretion it requires.
Read about my background, credentials and how discretion is handled.
Outline the situation and the outcome you need, in confidence. I will say plainly whether I can help and what a sensible next step looks like. A suitable channel is agreed before anything sensitive is shared, so please do not send credentials, documents or evidence with a first enquiry.
Routine calls: 0118 359 2225.
If an incident is under way, the separate incident route is the right place to start, as the details above are not monitored as an urgent channel.